1 Return of the Nazis (1)
He explains Freud's term 'transference' and says that's exactly what Dems are doing; xfr-ing their own guilt for racism/fascism/Nazism onto GOPers!? In this bk he'll show that THEY are the real fascists, the ones who use Nazi bullying and subscribe to fascist ideology. The 'opponents of hate' are actually the biggest haters.
- The Race Card (3)
He hadn't written of this before, having been confused when RR mentioned it in 1976 and 80 i.e. offhandedly linking Dems w/fascism. But now he gets it, realizing RR came of age in the 1930s when this was clearer. 2016's Hillary's America was intended to strip away the 'race card' from Dems, and 2018's 'Death of a Nation' to strip away the 'Nazi card'.
- Reductio Ad Hitlerum (7)
This was a term coined by Leo STRAUSS to deplore how linkage w/Hitler was cheapened by pol. use i.e. to mean just 'we don't like xxxx'.
- 'Not Our President' (11)
DD was initially amused by the Left's shock in 2016, assuming it would subside soon, but as it continued and worsened (continuing still) he began to suspect there was something more to it. As Dems seek 'any and all' means to get rid of TRUMP, actually striving to overturn the result of a free election [tho claiming to support those, even scolding GOPers to do so when Hillary wins (so they thot)], he remembered that MUSSOLINI and HITLER made use of similar tactics e.g. brown/blk shirts, violence, mayhem ... last time a major party rejected an election in America (like now) was 1860, leading to Civil War! He calls this a 'breakdown of confidence, among the losers, in the democratic process itself' (13, I'd say Dems, being fascists, NEVER had such confidence, only believed they could manip it as necessary). A similar brkdown was instrumental in the rise of both Mussolini in 1922 and Hitler in 1933! Now post-election violence is very unusual in America, so DD focuses on it. So we have an irony (not really, once you see that the Left ARE facists!); people who view themselves as anti-fascist actually ARE the fascists!
- A Rationale for Violence (19)
He heard 'no free speech for fascists' by antifa and recognized the slogan as being from Herbert MARCUSE, a 1960s Berkeley prof and guru of 60s radicals i.e. left is for tolerance ONLY for 'tolerant people' (for ME, but NOT for thee). He said we should destroy our opponents 'by any means necessary'. This is, of course, fascism (Mussolini and Hitler would heartily agree).
- The Real Fascists (23)
DD says NO to 2 questions; 1 should fascists be denied free speech? and 2 are those called fascist by the Left really fascist? (and are THEY freedom-loving?). This bk will take off here; he gives credit to 2 worthy predecessors; HAYEK's 1944 Road to Serfdom, which 1st made 'the startling claim that W welfare-state democracies, having defeated fascism, were themselves moving inexorably in the fascist direction' (cf Rahe's bks), and Jonah GOLDBERG's 2007 Liberal Fascism. DD starts there but goes deeper (I 1st read of this in HAYEK and Liberty Mag). DD (unlike HAYEK) shows HOW fascism emerged from the Left, how both fascism and Nazism emerged from a debate w/in socialism (after WWI fighters chose to die NOT for socialism, but Yes for their countries, which shocked socialists and forced a crisis). The resulting split led to Leninism/Bolshivism v. fascism/Nazism. DD says the Dems are actually closer to Nazis than fascists in some ways; no KKK-like org in Italy (white suprem, race segregation, state discrim). Even lib author Robt PAXTON says 1st 'fascist' phenom was KKK (he forgets to mention it was exclusively Dem). But even earlier Dem pres Andrew JACKSON effectively used genocide and concentration camps in his forced Indian relocations i.e. 'to systematically dispossess, disinherit, dismember these peoples' (UN def). Also, what is a slave plantation but a conc camp!? (work camps, not killing camps, humans seen as mere tools). Stanley ELKINS path-brking bk Slavery draws the direct relation between conc camp and plantation, noting similar personality deformations in both cases, so Dems 'got there 1st'!
- Learning from Hitler (26)
But it went both ways, Dem learned from H but Nazis also learned from Dems (Nazis were less racist in rejecting the Dems '1 drop' rule in favor of at least 3 gparents! Hitler wanted to displace Russians, Poles and Slavs using the SAME tactics as Dems did for Indians and Blacks. Then there's Margaret SANGER (fndr of Planned Parenthood) and her eugenics ideas. This is a story that deeply implicates heros of prog-ism; WW, FDR, JFK. WW was 'a veritable progenitor of American fascism' (27). FDR an avid admirer of MUSSOLINI who sought to import it to America. Admiration was mutual (Hitler too). JFK toured Germany in the 1930s and returned w/glowing reports of 'Nordic superiority'. But after WWII, progs realized they needed to 'retool the narrative' (shall we say). In the process fascism/Nazism became right-wing phenom, also more amorphous and hard-to-define, lacking structure (which they also claimed was true to conservatives e.g. 'a group of mental gestures'). But DD says James GREGOR has shown there WAS a scholar to join Adam SMITH (for capitalism) and Karl MARX (Marxism), named Giovanni GENTILE. Nazism takes the statism and collectivism of fascism and adds anti-Semitism (Nordic racial superiority more generally). But they sought to HIDE the fact that ALL of this grew out of hatred for capitalism, not so much productive but finance (led by Jews) capitalism (HITLER's distinction). In this he sounds alot like modern Dems w/their hatred of bankers, Wall St and the 1%! We're now seeing The Big Lie come into view, encompassing many smaller lies. Once this becomes clear, Dems are finished; exposed as the bigoted, thuggish, self-aggrandizing thieves or our wealth, freedom and lives they are. THEY are the heirs of MUSSOLINI and HITLER, and in defeating them we can finally lay to rest the ghosts of fascism and Nazism.
2 Falsifying History (31)
i.e. that Trump is fascist and libs are fighting for 'liberty'!? Even the leading philosopher of fascism has been kept hidden. The fact is both fascism and Nazism, like communism, are ideologies of the Left. Left/Right dates to 1789 and the French Rev i.e. in Natl Assmbly in Paris, partisans of Rev sat on L side and their opponents on right. But tho French 'right' sought to preserve monarchy and est. RCC i.e. 'throne and alter', US cons seek to conserve the American Founding ('War for Indep' v. 'Amer Rev'). 3 basic freedoms; econ (capitalism), pol (const democracy) and speech/rel [& thot]. Fndrs understood main threat is govt. Also seek to conserve the transcendent moral order that's not specified in Const but clearly underlies the Founding e.g. 'created equal ... inalienable rights ... right to life, liberty, [property] ...' In contrast, US Left is defined by hostility to any [and all] restrictions on federal govt power.
- Introducing the Lie (35)
DD looks at prog scholar of fascism Robt PAXTON, author of 2004 Anatomy of F. 'Fascism' is Italian for 'groupism, collectivism'. Even RP noted that TRUMP's individualism doesn't fit w/F. RP knows better but is purposely protecting his fellow libs and trying to shift F label onto TRUMP and the right (as they've been doing since WWII). But RP's main field is Vichy France, so DD looks at Anthony James GREGOR, 'the greatest living authority on F-ism' (38). Also Stanley PAYNE. AJG admits F-ism has always been revolutionary i.e. seeks to destroy all social, econ and pol artifacts of classical lib-ism. SP explicitly notes that its roots in Italy began NOT on the right, but on the left.
- Trump's Fascist Rating (38)
DD gives examples of how the Left tries to tar TRUMP and cons w/F-ism, but involving dbl lies i.e. not only that TRUMP/cons aren't F-ists but F-ism isn't what progs say it is. Father COUGHLIN 1930s is portrayed as right-wing, but was actually on the far left, and his rants helped get FDR elected (he said 'Roosevelt or Ruin'). Progs tend to focus on superficial similarities and ignore deep, systemic ones (of course they've gotten good at both, practicing since 1945). His main topic in this chap is racism/xenophobia.
- Characteristics of Nazism (43)
These are 'insanity', reactionary, authoritarian, natl-ist, mil-ist, capitalist. Last was invented by Soviet propaganda machine i.e. linking cap-ism w/fascism (F word used for ANY ideology against communism). But essence of Left is collectivism (and statism, socialism) v. individualism, and cap-ism is on latter side. Both HITLER and MUSSOLINI saw their programs as a way to do rapid econ dev via a framework that was NOT capitalist but collectivist, statist and socialist.
- The Karl Marx of Fascism (51)
DD introduces us to Giovanni GENTILE (get pic), the leading phil of F-ism in 1st half of 20C. Student of HEGEL and BERGSON. The Left has purposely obscured him. His key ideas were collectivism, statism and socialism. He was a life-long socialist, and viewed fascism as a new and improved, modified form of it. But unlike MARX, who saw a struggle between working class and capitalists, GG saw it between 'selfish individuals' and 'fully actualized ones who willingly put themselves at the svc of society and state'. He thot corps too should serve public interests. Society and state were blurred together. Morality and rel. must be subordinated to the State. MUSSOLINI's phrase was 'everything w/in the state, nothing [of value] outside the state' (... nothing human exists or has value outside the state'). The State must take/hold 'the commanding heights'. This is obviously leftist. To achieve it he advocated what Nazis later called Gleichshaltung i.e. ideological conformity via education or force. Its likely that GG ghost-wrote most of M's speeches and books. MUSSOLINI was actually less willing to use force than HITLER, he preferred a voluntary conformity. But in 1944 GG was accosted at his apt by members of a rival leftist faction, who shot him at close range. M promised revenge but relented after GG's family urged leniency. DD thinks of GG like Robt E LEE i.e. a good man fighting for a bad cause. OBAMA's 2012 slogan 'we all belong to the govt' (i.e. that's the only thing we all belong to) is very consistent w/GG's views. DD says RAWLS seems thin gruel compared to GG, but libs can't afford to have it known that their core views mirror GG's.
- In Speech and in Deed (56)
The left often cites how fascists don't follow the theory i.e. coop w/banks, army, churches ..., but DD says of course they do i.e. pol necessary (expediency), like LINCOLN had to compromise to keep slave states in the union for awhile. LENIN also made compromises, which he considered termporary. M said all in state, nil outside it, nil against it. His theory was totalitarian, but he never had the heart to fully implement it, 'in part because he was, well, Italian. His totalitarianism was always Italian, which is to say, half-assed' :-) He sort of enforced it, but not fully. He lacked the punctiliousness of HITLER and STALIN. M k. only a few v. millions. M had less power than either H or S but was able to get some of his agenda enacted. They all admired fellow fascist FDR. M even signed a deal w/RCC in 1929, realizing he couldn't afford to completely alienate them (tho like all leftists he detested the RCC and Christianity). M reached his zenith in mid-30s but once he allied w/HITLER he had to partially embrace racism and anti-Semitism (neither came naturally to him) and he lost influence. Then in 1943 the Allies landed in Italy and M was ousted. HITLER rescued him and installed him at Salo in N Italy under German cntl (for awhile). He planned to abolish all pvt property but never got that far. He never abandoned his leftist ideals i.e. statism, collectivism, socialism.
- The Natl Socialist Platform (60)
We see in HITLER too a dedicated socialist, chg'd DAP to NSDAP. He even said in a 1927 speech 'we are socialists, enemies of today's capitalist system of exploitation, determined to destroy that system' (60). Reading the 25-point program reminds you alot of today's Dem party platform, esp. the far-left SANDERS/WARREN wing. Today's progs like to say Hitler destroyed that wing of his party (headed by STRASSER bros), but Hitler NEVER repudiated those principles. But HITLER's foes favored socialism 1st, natl liberation 2nd v. and he chose the opposite order. HITLER too made a deal w/RCC, knew he needed to appease them (tho he hated Chr and RCC). Like other ldrs he made compromises (for awhile) out of pol necessity (expediency). Fascism/Nazism were destroyed from outside by war, but Communism wasn't.
The conflict between Fascists, Nazis and older socialist parties must be regarded as [being] between rival socialist factions
- Friedrich HAYEK in 'The Road to Serfdom'
3 Mussolini's Journey (65)
HAYEK quote that conflicts between fascism/Nazism and other forms of socialism are intramural rivalries, he was 1st w/this important insight (1st to see thru prog cloaking haze).
M fnd'd Italian fascist party 3-23-1919. Movement orig'd 1914. M was a Fnd-ing father of the world socialist movement along w/LENIN of Russia, Rosa LUXEMBURG of Germany, and Antonio GRAMSCI of Italy (M one of the best known Marxists in world). M's decision to join fascists was controversial, since he'd been to that time a great ldr of world socialism. His support for Italian involvement in WWI cost him expulsion from the Italian Socialist Party for 'heresy'. M had been raised in a socialist family and publicly declared in 1901 (like profession of faith?!) at 18yo. By 21yo he was an orthodox Marxist and had read widely. Like other Marxists he rejected rel. and had authored anti-RCC propaganda v. his native RCC-ism. He became a writer, editor and pol organizer. Exiled to Switz 1902-4 he kept up those activities there. His output now fills 7 vols. He was 2x jailed for his activism. In 1912 he was recog as a socialist ldr by Italian ldrs of that movement. In 1929 he became editor of Avanti!, the ofcl pub of the party. Progs like to express bewilderment that he'd then become a fascist, but this is just part of the Big Lie. He didn't just join the fascist party, he created it! HITLER was just an obscure local organizer in Germany when M came to pwr and, following his famous March on Rome, est. the world's 1st fascist regime in Italy in 1922. HITLER later modelled his failed 1923 Putsch on that March and deeply admired M. At 1st M thot HITLER a 'clown', but by 1939 after H had conquered Austria, Poland, Czech, Belg, Norway and France, M showed more respect! HITLER admitted w/o M there'd have been no Nazism. Both were avowedly men of the Left.
- From Socialism to Fascism (68)
M wasn't the only one to make this transition, 100s of leading socialists, initially in Italy but later Germany, France and other countries, became fascists. Every single leading fascist at its founding was a person of the left, nearly all Marxists (says AJG). This transition wasn't unnatural, but like the one from Russian socialist to Leninist Bolshevik i.e. what WORKS, and delivers RESULTS! These were ways to 'get things done' as modern progs love to say too of their methods. Progs are of course silent and seemingly confused (not) re these transitions. They conspicuously fail to mention any links between M/H and socialism or Marxism (tho they're there). Viscious intramural socialism fights have been common; Red v. White Russians, later Bolshie split into Leninists v. Trotskyites (T later k. 8-21-1940 on STALIN's orders). These were all men of the Left. This just proves the most ferocious fights arise among those ideologically very similar (think of rel. wars) i.e. small points of doctrine. The fascists were on the left end of the socialist movement. They saw themselves not as jettisoning Marxism but saving it from obsolescence. They out-Marxed MARX (like anabaptists out-Calvined CALVIN). DD excavated this story from dense scholarly works on fascism which progs are not anxious to have understood, for obvious reasons. Today its seen as villainous, but it attracted millions in pre-WWII years so obviously wasn't viewed that way by them. Tracing its genealogy destroys the Big Lie that its a right-wing phenom.
- Crisis of Marxism (71)
MARX didn't CALL for workers to rise v. capitalists, he predicted it had to happen. Saw himself as a kind of prophet, didn't matter what you wanted, it was coming, inevitable. He saw it as strictly scientific, realistic, materialistic (like fuel, compression, spark -> it has to run, no choice). He thot it would arrive 1st in most advanced capitalist countries e.g. Germany or England (or America). Thot workers would get poorer and poorer. Seems almost comical that anyone believed it, but they did (like a rel.). But by early 20C it was becoming clear that was wrong; no signs of rev in Germ/Eng and workers seemed better off and more settled that before!? Per-capita income was rising, having dbl'd since MARX wrote. Werner SOMBART lamented that socialism was even less likely in America, the capitalist powerhouse, since all were too comfortable i.e. 'all rev utopias come to grief on roast beef and apple pie' (72). They needed to explain where MARX went wrong and how to keep the socialist dream alive. They'd expected workers to rise and join v. going to war for their own nations, didn't happen. Then the 1917 commie rev in backward Russia b. advanced nation?! MARX had thot rev was impossible w/o 1st going thru stages of capitalist dev. His plot was feudalism -> capitalism -> communism, and this didn't fit. And Russia wasn't a revolt of proles but an org'd mil. op by professional revs v. czarists. The revs weren't laborers but intellectuals; lawyers, journalists, activists. Most Marxists tried to ignore these problems and keep a stiff upper lip. Marxism fell into 'bovine stupidity' and 'a kind of intellectual stupor' (73). Many ignored the real world and pined for one as 'it ought to be'. A few realized this was just daydreaming. They saw things were getting worse for them as workers conditions were improving. A great debate erupted leading to a split between Leninist/Bolshie-ism v. fascism/Nazism. LENIN's answer was clever, he said (in Imperialism, Highest Stage of Capitalism) that capitalists had 'exported' its crisis via colonialism to 3rd World i.e. buying off locals via exploitation of foreigners. MARX hadn't forseen that, L said, so that's why we're seeing rev on periphery (Russia). He also said (in What's to be Done?') that rev doesn't just happen, as MARX said; he'd shown too much confidence in working people, too ignorant, downtrodden to initiate anything. Need professional vanguard of trained insurgents (led by people like himself), to overthrow ruling class 'on behalf of' workers. He still thot the state would 'wither away' eventually (good luck w/that). DD notes that's esp. funny given the USSR's almighty central govt. LENIN's innovations weren't well-rcv'd among European leftists. But L was wave of future, many of his oppenents faded into history or in RL's case exec. by Weimar regime in 1919 (for assoc w/failed armed uprising). Meanwhile, M in Italy became the ldr of the other spin-off, fascism.
- A Myth of Rev Violence (76)
The fascist path from the 'crisis of Marxism' was different from the Leninist one (tho w/some similarities, of course, since both sprung from same root). But the former is more interesting for our purpose since MUSSOLINI's fascism has more relevance to American prog-ism than LENIN's Bolshevism. But M didn't do it alone; his Italian fascism - the 1st fascism - emerged as a synthesis of 2 earlier socialist movements: the natl-ist movement [that had unified Italy 18xx] and the revolutionary syndicalist movement. Both were built on the fndn of 1 man, Georges SOREL [get pic]. He was a French Marxist who came to realize Marx's predictions had failed. In particular he distrusted Marx's historicalc determinism; he complained Marx had given us only words, not a plan for enacting them. SOREL realized the working class isn't going to initiate anything, it must be done FOR them. In his answer he went beyond Marx into psychology. Humans are motivated by pwrfl inner aspirations which are not entirely rational. He called these 'myths' [ideologies] which can serve to move large groups to people to action. He gave the Crusades as an example; these myths aren't descriptions of things, but 'expressions of will' to get them done. Like Lenin he saw the need for a rev. vanguard to goad (and guide) the proles to action. He we see the 'consciousness raising' so often assoc. w/the Left. This implies that Rev. begins in the human mind [heart, more like]. He also thot a working man who rejects revolution [which they'd seen in spades in WWI] could be diagnosed as suffering from 'false consciousness' [like ?'s yr? bk 'What's the Matter w/KS']. The 1960s New Left was obsessed w/this. Saul ALINSKY [mentor to Obama and Hillary and many other lefties] devoted a large part of his trng to it. Today Blk Lives Matter, Antifa and other leftwing groups use it for their protest trng. SOREL's main action was a 'general strike' [syndicalism treats labor like a syndicate (union) which can act as one] i.e. collective bargaining [or blackmail]. He dreamed of bringing down the capitalist system in 1 fell swoop. Both LENIN and SOREL realized this wouldn't be peaceful since capitalists wouldn't give up w/o a fight. They both saw it would lead to violent Rev. SOREL's bk is called 'Reflections on Violence' so he didn't shy from that; he said it was 'beautiful' and 'heroic', a kind of 'healthy cleansing' [like TR and Winston CHURCHILL viewed war], a 'removal of social debris'. This is also retained by modern progs and all other fascists; worship of pwr and willingness to use violence [and break all other rules; lie, cheat, steal, kill ...] to get it. They were fine w/street thugs beating people up to get'er done. He (and many others) saw fascism as a continuation and fulfillment of socialism, a 'completion of the historical role of the Left'. MUSSOLINI was impressed by SOREL, agreeing that proles were instruments, NOT protagonists of history.
- It's the Nation, Stupid (78)
In 1911 Italy invaded Tripoli and Cyrenaica [Libya] to take that province away from the Ottomans. MUSSOLINI noted that the proles responded more pwrfly to the appeal of the nation than they ever had to their class. The same things appeared in WWI as proles supported their own beloved nation v. some vague worldwide 'working class'. The importance of this discovery for M and socialists can't be overstated. They learned that people will give their lives for their nation but NOT their class. This was a hard lesson since MARX had taught that 'nation' was just an invention of the bourgeois[ie] ruling class and thus 'artificial'. But that's not how people acted. MARX thus saw 'patriotism' as just a way to keep the proles in line. M vigorously opposed the Libyan war (for that reason) and ridiculed displays of patriotism, even calling the Italian flag a 'rag'. But by 1914 he was thinking differently, realizing he could use natl-ism to advance socialism. In the trenches no one had cared about class, but all had cared about nation and winning. This insight was also developed by Italian natl-ists like Roberto MICHELS, Enrico CORRADINI and Alfredo ROCCO. They later all became fascists; MICHELS was orig a German socialist before moving to Italy to join the fascists. Other 2 were socialist activists. Their socialist group later merged into M's fascist party. Both were later involved in M's govt. A frmr student of Max WEBER, MICHELS made the case for natl-ism after a sociological examination of what made groups cohere. After family, the strongest link is tribe (not class), the ancestor of modern nations, which are built from shared mores and history i.e. groups of tribes. MICHELS called nations 'communities of will'. They also realized class made little sense in mostly undev'd, agricultural Italy! Nearly all were poor and forced to do manual labor. So the tribal glue was ethno-natl-ism. The fragile initial 'Risorgimento' needed to be supplemented by a 2nd R that would truly make Italy into a mature, dev'd country (81). They feared Italy was a 'prole' nation used by rich ones [England, Germany, France] as guest workers; they wanted to join that club and have an empire and get rich themselves. The 1911 invasion of Libya was done by natl-ists (at that time opposed by socialists). N's also supported getting Italy into WWI w/Allies (but not socialists). M came to agree w/them on that and brot other S'ers along eventually.
- The Fascist Synthesis (82)
while Italian fascists stressed ethnicity, Germans ones stressed race e.g. Marxist (and Darwinian) Ludwig WOLTMANN. He dev'd the idea of 'Rassenkampf' or racial struggle, which would result in the triumph of strong (superior) races and elimination of weak (inferior) ones. He was one of the original inspirations for the Nazis. This racial component was a key difference between Italian and German fascism, and modern American progs also have a race obsession. Any proposal to remove race from census data provokes a storm of protest from leftists e.g. Cornel WEST. The syndicalists org'd 3 general strikes in Italy; 1904, 11 and 13. M supported all and org'd 11. It failed and he was imprisoned for 5mos. All were failures, which caused M and others to give up on 'class' and re-org around 'nation' (fascism). Fascism was a confab of natl-ism and socialism. MARX himself had supported colonialism as a way to dev. backward countries. After he d. ENGELS backed BISMARCK's German wars and its annexation of Schleswig, part of Denmark til then. That's why modern progs are still exited re public-pvt partnerships to 'get things done' (esp. big govt + big bus + big labor). Both LENIN and MUSSOLINI saw the need for a mega-state to enforce all this, tho Lenin kept talking of 'state withering away' and M more honestly supported the new Leviathan. In this sense its esp clear that modern progs are fascists and modern cons are NOT i.e. we want to REDUCE the size/scope of centralized govt power (and so definitely are NOT fascists, tho often accused of that by Left). M wanted 'corporatism' which modern libs call (behind closed doors) 'state-run capitalism'. That's why they want cntl of key industries e.g. banks, finance cos, insurance cos, health care, energy and education! Tho progs won't ack M, they support the SAME things he did.
Hitler saw the future as Germany treating Slavs as N Americans had Indians, Russia's Volga would be Germany's Mississippi
- Timothy SNYDER in 'Bloodlands' 2010
4 A Dem Party Secret (87)
Bloodlands quote says HITLER imagined he'd deal w/slavs as Americans had w/natives i.e. Volga = MS Rivers. Sitting at Landsberg Prison he had a big idea. Smarting from WWI and pondering how France and UK were global pwrs w/colonies all over, there weren't many left for Germany. He also had 'a domestic problem' i.e. the Jews (which he saw as a '5th column'). Final Solution would come much later e.g. 1-20-42 Wannsee Conf, but for now he simply sought a way to deal w/~750k Jews in Germany. 1 idea was to ghettoize them, 2 expel them. Eventually ~500k left between 1933-9 on their own. Tho HITLER didn't know much re America (and despised it, seeing it as 'half Judaized, half negrified' also 'all built on $' i.e. unrestricted Jewish capitalism), he'd been fascinated by cowboy novels he'd read as a boy (by Karl MAY, also beloved by Albert EINSTEIN, Albert SCHWEITZER and millions of other Germans) and noted the general theme of the stories (re Old Shatterhand and his Apache sidekick Winnetou, hmmm, like Lone Ranger and Tonto?) was the tragic disappearance of the natives, Indian heroism giving way to inevitible white settlement/progress. He also read re Civil War, not real history but impressionistic and novelistic sources. He drew very firm conclusions (cf historican Ira KATZNELSON): he hated blacks, admired Dem racism and regretted S loss in 1865. Like other Nazi ldrs he was fascinated by 1937 Gone w/the Wind book. So now back to his big idea: Germany didn't need to imitate Brits/French re overseas colonies; who wants to rule a bunch of brown or blk natives? Besides, the climate wasn't suitable for hearty Nordics. Let the others have those (unproductive) colonies. Germany would instead 'colonize' all of Europe; he called his plan 'Lebensraum' and found an important precedent in US conquest of W frontier (Manifest Destiny). That was done, he noted, via 'merciless policies of treaty breaking, war v. Indians, wiping out resistance, forcibly displacing/relocating them e.g. Trail of Tears, and seizing their land for white settlement. He decided to adopt THAT plan for settling Germans on large parts of the European continent (esp. E Europe, later aka the Bloodlands i.e. Poland, most of E Europe, and a large part of the European section of Russia). He noted in 1928 how the Dems had gunned down the Redskins from millions to a few 100k, and kept the rest 'under observation in a cage' [concentration work camps]. He also got the idea from Darwinism and esp. Ludwig WOLTMANN's writings i.e. on how animals 'clear' territories, displacing weaker species ... HITLER admired Boer War camps used by UK to demoralize Dutch opposition in S Africa in addition to tactics v. natives in America (John TOLAND's bio). Tim SNYDER's Bloodlands also stresses this.
- A Pre-History of Nazism (91)
Though Dems love to link HITLER w/right, he's clearly far more at home w/Dems Andrew JACKSON and John C CALHOUN than w/Abe LINCOLN i.e. in frmr's 'exterminitory colonialism and slave labor'. Note also that HITLER's hatred for America is largely BECAUSE of its capitalism, which he saw as corruption from Jews. Also, while most Americans are provincial and don't see how events here affected Europe and vice versa, this bk will try to correct that, showing how American Dem history encouraged HITLER, showing him 'how its done'. DD will also show the historical susceptibility of US Dems to fascist appeals and practices; they INVENTED many of those long before the Italians and Germans caught on. No wonder Dems were 'on board' in 1920s/30s when latter caught on (they knew THEY were being copied and admired). So Nazi DNA had roots in the Dem Party USA from the beginning, Dems, not Nazis, are the originators of the politics of hate. The Dems' Indian removal and plantation slavery were key ideas for HITLER and Nazis. He clarifies here how many cons want to defend or minimize American participation in these things, perhaps shifting it to 'the South', but he says not USA, not South, but DEMS were responsible for these precedents (and are still at it [fascism] today). Also, he admits that the Holocaust was unique in many ways (doesn't want to offend Jews), but 'genocide' is not. DD distinguishes Concentration [Work] Camps from Extermination Camps. Frmr like Dem slave plantations and later STALIN gulags. German forced-labor camps were Dachau, Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Flossenberg, Bergen-Belsen and Ravensbruck (all in Germany, last a female camp w/all female guards). In contrast, Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec and Chelmno were death camps and all in German-occupied Poland. Auschwitz[-Berkenau] and Majdanek were both, labor AND killing sections. Of course many laborers d. or were worked to death (or k.), but that wasn't their main purpose. As WWII progressed, Nazis sought to reduce labor death-rates since they needed them so much, d. rates went down in 1943 and stayed down til the end of the war when, in a burst of nihilistic rage, the Nazis went on a killing spree to 'cover their tracks' (and 'if I can't use'em, neither can you' i.e. scorched earth). DD says there were 15k-20k conc camps and sub-camps in Germany and German-occupied Europe, and a much-smaller number of d. camps, none in Germany. Most d. camps were set up later, while labor camps began in 1933 when HITLER t/o. Stanley ELKINS' 1976 bk Slavery 1st linked conc camps to US Dem slave plantations, and scholars have used it since then. DD admits that Dems k. far fewer people than Germans, but there's still a similar 'signature'. But unlike Nazi atrocities which lasted only 12yrs, Dem ones 'have been going on since the party was fnd'd [by Andrew JACKSON] in 1828 (96)! [CRB: Daniel WEBSTER and Henry CLAY co-fnd'd the anti-Jackson Whig party around the same time].
- The Fake Genocide and the Real One (96)
Inmates of conc camps noticed a strange and particular type, which they called the 'Muselmann' [odd, since it means 'muslim', no one knows how the term originated]. This type was 'emotionally destroyed, between life and death, in a daze, no response to conversation, orders or even blows, could only see what was in front of them, quite literally had lost the will to live and merely existed like the zombie characters in The Walking Dead. DD says this is a tragic metaphor for what happened in America to natives (and later black slaves) as communities (not all individuals). Tho he says blacks and Jews have recovered more than natives. Leftie historian David Stannard even calls his bk on Indian history 'American Holocaust', saying it began 1492. He invents a fake genocide to avoid blaming Andrew Jackson and the Dem party for the real one (v. both natives and blacks). Most natives d. of disease which was NOT intended by whites; 'genocide' involves INTENT to exterminate. But he says many cons (including himself once) fall for a prog trap in trying to defend 'the West' and 'America' from genocide charges. But he finally realized THEY're not responsible (not 'the South' either, since many Dems lived in North and also favored Indian clearances and slave plantations), Andrew Jackson and the DEMs are!
- Dark When He Finished Killing Them (99)
This ch looks at Andrew JACKSON and the Dem party from 1828-60. JACKSON's policy was to cajole E natives to leave their ancestral land and head west, or be forcibly evacuated or killed. This was lebensraum, Dem Party style. He was helped by Dem allies like Lewis CASS of MI, who portrayed natives as savages, unable to understand or practice 'enlightened' or civilized ways i.e. they're like beasts so should be treated that way by the white man. Nazis of course did the same for Jews and slavs, as Dems did for blacks. He we see [Freudian] transference and blaming the victim. JACKSON didn't go that route, professing to be their friend, wanting to move them only to 'protect' them from white expansion. He wanted to be their 'great white father', often signing letters that way. He did, in fact, adopt a native son. Many Dem slave-owners took the same line. By now we should be able to see this pattern of exploitation (even today as Dems pose as 'protectors' or blacks and other minorities, but do little except make promises at election time). DD says w/friends like Dems, who needs enemies?! :-) Tho claiming to be their friend, JACKSON was proud of his nickname 'Indian Killer', telling his wife Rachel 'it was dark before we finished killing them' at Horseshoe Bend in today's S AL. He got elected in 1828 by promising the Indian Removal Act and later used a combo of trickery, threats and murder to get-er done. The Trail of Tears was the forced relo of 17k Cherokee, comparable to Bataan d. march 1942 (by Japs). Recent scholarship has shown that IHS Indian Hlth Svc had a longtime strategy of sterilizing native females and sometimes taking kids for adoption (w/o permission). This WAS a genocide, carried out by Dems. Some Dems have actually called for JACKSON to be removed from dollar bill ... DD says TRUMP, TR and RR also admired AJ but here he sides w/dissenting progs that AJ shouldn't be admired, glad to replace him on $20 bill w/GOP heroine Harriet TUBMAN in 2020. But TRUMP and RR were frmr Dems and likely that's where the urge comes from. Even progs are right once in awhile!
Slave Camps and Nazi Camps (104)
Now DD turns from Indian removal to southern Dem plantation slavery. He says it was 1959 when Stanley ELKINS revolutionized the comparative history of these 2 inst (latter and Nazi work camps). Marc BUGGELN also helped in linking the 2. ELKINS noted how compliant 'house Negroes' and rebellious 'field Negroes' were and are real phenomena, not just stereotypes. ELKINS realized the same phenom appeared in Nazi conc camps. Some inmates adapted better than others, once they realized the rules had chg'd from the outside world. There was the silly 'Sambo' char, never grew up, compliant. Also some chose to be 'Kapos' i.e. helped overlords enforce rules on fellows (Geo SOROS from youthful Nazi trauma?). Like Sambos, disfigured and strange. ELKINS realized Nazi camps and Dem slave plantations shared these 'types'; closed systems where inmates lived in an alt world, dev'd new personalities; abnormal, twisted w/no equiv in normal world. This shocked but enlightened the world of slavery scholars, sparking a huge debate that's still going. DD picks up where ELKINS left off, since latter didn't want to 'go there' (being a prog). DD discusses many detailed similarities, concluding that even the Nazis didn't have the chutzpah of Geo FitzHUGH and John C CALHOUN, who said slavery was 'good for slaves'! (112)
A Lasting Legacy (112)
DD says southern Dem slavery has produced over time a distinctive African American culture e.g. repertoire of songs and stories and relationships -> black ID in USA. No analog in Nazi camps, partly due to short duration; in general no close relationships formed. So Jews no longer display effects but blacks do (and natives) do. He says many features of the plantation; dilapidated housing, broken families, a high degree of violence, paucity of opportunity and advancement prospects, widespread sense of nihilism and despair - are evident in Dem-run inner cities e.g. Oakland, Detroit, Baltimore, Chicago ... (113). Orlando PATTERSON (blk) has angered progs by blaming many black patterns (idle, ran away, compulsive liars, underclass ...) on a subgroup of slaves in plantation culture. Big Lie folks don't like shedding that kind of light on things. Today's blk illeg rate is approaching 80%. Its not ALL due to slavery but certainly partly. Crime rates vastly higher, same. W E B DuBOIS certainly blamed slavery for many of these things and sought to break the cycle. Later DD notes how Dem inner-city 'machine' politics continues many of these dynamics i.e. keep'em low and under cntl, 'subdue, cntl, exploit' for necessary votes to keep 'the man' in power.
It was passage of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935 that made Germany a full-fledged racist regime. American [Dems in S] laws were the main foreign precedents
- George FREDERICKSON in 'Racism: A Short History' 2002
5 The Original Racists (115)
Opens w/GF quote from bk 'Racism'; Germany's Nuremberg Laws on 1935 made it a 'full-fledged racist regime', but American laws were its main foreign precedents.
Shortly after coming to power in 1933, HITLER and his coterie met 6-5-34 to discuss those laws. DD names them but esp. important was a young lawyer named Heinrich KRIEGER who'd studied at the U of Arkansas and whose rsrch into US race law formed the basis of those now under discussion. Legal scholar James WHITMAN recently documented this fact (which he was astounded to discover) in his 2017 bk 'Hitler's American Model'. While the Americans had focused on blacks the Nazis would modify them for Jews (but also 'gypsies and other undesirable populations'). Those present at the Nazi mtg were moderates v. radicals. The radicals cited the '1 drop' rule in the US, but even they agreed in the end that was going too far [too inhumane!], and they decided 1 Jewish gparent -> you're Jewish.
Shifting the Blame (118)
DD's orig plan was to show parallel dev of S and Nazi racism, but discovered the frmr actually 'shaped and influenced' the latter! It not only preceded by 'helped cause' Nazism. Tho WHITMAN was helpful in showing this, he and others are still 'practitioners of the big lie' in blaming 'America' or 'the South' instead of the real culprit, progressives (i.e. the real fascists) and the Dem party. Same for Ira KATZNELSON. Progs want cons to fall for this ploy and lead to 2 outcomes; 1 patriotic rush to defend 'the South' and 'America' from tarnishing as racist, and 2 make cons apologists for racism, segregationism and racial terrorism (per antifa talking points). He cites Joshua MURAVCHIK's bk 'Heaven of Earth' approvingly several times, but says he's fallen for this prog trick i.e. trapped into minimizing racism in vain attempt to exonerate America i.e. falling for the trap. DD calls all this 'an unbelievable scam' (of course part of the Big Lie). DD says both spring from 'herrenfolk socialism'. DD will show how Nazi violence in the 1930s took tips from 19C Dem (KKK) violence v. blacks. finally he'll shown how both Dems and later Hitler 'came to deplore the random, chaotic violence v. tgt'd minorities', replacing it w/more 'rational policies' i.e. institutionalized racism, much less messy, and more efficient [that's why Dems denounced KKK and HITLER off'd his frmr ally Brownshirt ldr Ernst ROEHM 'Gruss vom Fuhrer' in 'Night of Long Knives').
Fascism as a Non-Racist Concept (122)
DD says 'fascist racism' is an oxymoron, no such thing. Despite endless prog humbug, there's no intrinsic link. MUSSOLINI was NOT a racist (til HITLER made him act like one to get German help, cf 1938 Manifesto of Fascist Racism) and GENTILE's orig (most authentic) version lacked it. MUSSOLINI meant by 'the Italian race' sharing the same language, culture, customs, history i.e. ethno-natl-ism (all races welcome). MUSSOLINI's own biographer and mistress was Jewish (Margherita SARFATTI), as was ally Angelo O OLIVETTI. He liked Jews. There were few blacks in Italy, and while Italians shared 'the European prejudice v. Africa as primitive and uncivilized, and this carried over into a view of black civilizational inferiority', that's not the same as anti-black racism (more like favoring our team over that other, less skilled one). GENTILE found the 1938 Manifesto (and legislation) morally objectionable, but 'Il Duce' felt he had no choice. Italians of course hated the Nazi idea of Nordic superiority, which would see themselves and other groups as racially inferior. In fact MUSSOLINI helped many Jews escape the Nazis, proving he didn't buy into anti-Semitism.
The Jew as A Greedy Capitalist (125)
DD now turns to Nazi racism, showing how it was left- v. right-wing. He wants to show the psych. root of it (similar to Dems). Its true source is examined in German historian Gotz ALY's 2014 bk 'Why the Germans? Why the Jews?'. He says its the (modern) secular and racial aspect of anti-Semitism that's operative, not the old rel. animus v. Jews for rejecting the messiah and their role in the crucifixion. That older version always had an escape hatch; conversion to Chr. Not the modern version. Defined racially, their faults are biological v. confessional. ALY reaches a surprising conclusion; that modern anti-Sem is rooted not in perceptions of Jewish inferiority, but success! They're hated because they're more hardworking, creative, better educated and richer than other Germans (Thomas SOWELL shows this occurs elsewhere w/Asians ...). In other words, this type of racism is anchored in the worst of the 7 deadly sins; envy. Normally racism involves looking down on a group, but this type 'looks up' to Jews, despising their succes. In the end its the same e.g. declaring these successes as due to wickedness. Jews are portrayed as sly, cunning, money-minded 'usurpers', swindlers, so any success isn't due to entrepreneurship or effort but simply Jewish moral depravity. It was an early form of ID politics, seeing 'us' as 'held down' by this oppressive 'foreign tribe'. One German portrayed Jews from E Europe as 'an invasion of young, ambitious trouser salesmen' (126) and wanting to 'dominate Germany's financial markets'. They contrasted Germans' 'old-fashioned love of work' w/Jewish 'slick profiteering by fat cats'. LOTS of lit in this vein from 1880s-1930s. But now DD highlights a source ALY doesn't use much, HITLER, who early in his career attended a lecture by German leftist econ Gottfried FEDER, who later became a Nazi. His lecture was on 'How Capitalism can be Eliminated'. FEDER distinguished between [good] productive v. [bad] finance capitalism, and HITLER latched onto that. FEDER said this distinction eluded MARX, and saw himself as mounting a critique of MARX from the left (i.e. MARX not radical enough). Good capitalism involves making useful stuff v. bad cap. is based on usury aka fraud. HITLER loved that FEDER then linked good cap. w/Germans and bad cap. w/Jews. HITLER later commented that this gave him 'one of the most essential premises for the fndn of a new party'. In a 1920 speech HITLER said his anti-Semitism is due to 2 abhorrent characteristics: money and materialism. He said Jews accumulated wealth w/o sweat (unlike others) and ther domination of finances 'corrupts all honest work'. So the Nazi Party is now here to fix all that. DD says notice how this good v. bad cap. distinction is precisely the one also made by Dems (esp. far left) in USA. They focus their hatred on 'finanice capitalism, alleged crimes of banks and Wall Street [and 'the 1%']'. The only word they omit is 'Jewish'. DD quotes HITLER's written thots on Jews 'having no interest in things of the spirit ... words used not to express thots but invent new ways to disguise them ... gifted only in juggling other peoples' property to swindle all ... praises Hanseatic League of MA for keeping prices fixed thru varying supply/demand cycles ... til Jews allowed to 'stick their noses out of the ghetto' ... then sense of honor and loyalty in trade began to melt away ... Judaism has made the fixing of prices depend on the laws of supply/demand, factors i.e. which have nil to do w/intrinsic value ...'. DD says it should be obvious that this brand of anti-Semitism is largely rooted in anti-capitalism, and the Jews are the capitalists par excellence. So Nazism was directly against liberal econ policies in general, and v. finance cap. and stk exchanges in particular. ALY shows that this modern type of anti-Sems springs from the same source as leftism and socialism. So its really more about economics than race. And its definitely LEFTIST! Even MARX talked of the modern, secular Jew (not the 'Sabbath' Jew) as driven by self-interest and hucksterism, his worldly god is Money, and called for emancipation from all that (more that system than the Jews themselves). But for MARX the real enemy is 'Jewish capitalism'. The motive isn't noble tho, but to 'outlaw' Jews (eliminate competition) and confiscate the fruits of their success for 'the Volk'. There's also the psych. motive of boosting the ego of an underperforming people (Volk) at the expense of an overacheiving one. So even if we're not as smart as them, we're 'morally superior' to them (sound familiar? progs 'I'm a good person' [cons aren't]). So Anti-Sem (and Nazism, and ...) is a source of self-esteem for the 'ignorant, stupid, lazy and/or immoral' (he says 'unintelligent and lazy'). Nazis also appealed to equality or solidarity ('strangely enough' DD says). Like the old saw that unity (of our side) requires an enemy. It replaces the econ winners/losers w/Nordics on top v. Jews (and other 'undesirables') on bottom. So it promises a kind of equality among Nordics, a Nordic type of socialism, one that appeals to losers [Dems = Party of Losers] in the race of life. In this way it closely resembles its forebear, Dem racism.
The Hidden Appeal of Racism (129)
DD now returns to Dems/progs of 1860s-1930s w/anti-blk racism. He says this racism 'in its sheer volume and vehemence ... outdistances not only Italian fascist racism, which was marginal, but also German anti-Semitism, and only that of the actual Nazi era matches that of the Dems! (130). He cites quotes from Dems on 'the niggers ... coons' (incl Robt BYRD, Ted BILBO, James VARDAMAN) ... then cites books by Chas CARROLL, Robt SHUFELDT, Chas McCORD, saying progs always want to tie this racism to 'America' or 'the South' but never to Dems which is where it belong[ed/s]. They love linking it to the 'dead white guys' who fnd'd America. Yet one searches the fnd'ing era in vain for the kind of bigoted extremism that defines Dem rhetoric and practice in 19C and early 20C. Those and the KKK enforcers were inventions of a later era and of a new party fnd'd in 1820s by Dem hero Andrew JACKSON. Here we can begin to see that, just as the German 'volk' got something from their anti-Semitism, S white Dems did from this racism too (and in the same way). Though racism preceded Dems, in a sense the Dem Party invented pol. racism in early 19C in order to defend white supremacy in S and v. GOP and abolitionist attacks from the N. It was an ideological war. He cites Dem Roger TANEY (CJ of SC) and his Dred Scott decision. Also northern Dem Stephen DOUGLAS (famous debates w/LINCOLN). John C CALHOUN even called slavery a 'positive good' (including for slaves!?). Even post-Civil War, the ideological war continued as Dems constructed an entire worldview of white supremacism to establish their pol. domination of the S. We'll see how shortly, but for now we ask why they went to such effort, what did it get them? It helps to realize most S whites were NOT slaveowners, so why would they care? A clue is Dem planter John TOWNSEND's 1860 speech explaining how the plantation system benefited even non-slave-owning S whites (in the same way Nazism did for even stupid or lazy Germans, by elevating ALL whites over any blacks i.e. est. a 'pecking order' instituted in law, p133 summary). So there it is, they created 'an aristocracy of color [or race]', just like later Nazis. So even the 'poorest, laziest, dumbest white man is still above the richest, most industrious, most intelligent black man'. Both enforce what we can call 'herrenvolk socialism' or social equality of the master class, buttressing self-esteem for the white man and also the Dem pol. stranglehold of S from 1860s to 1960s!
Note: reminds me of that book title on how modern blk problems were created by blks observing (and later emulating) 'white trash' in the South, w/bad habits ... promiscuity, drinking, smoking, self-destructive behavior ... (Thomas SOWELL's 2006 'Black Rednecks and White Liberals'?)
Racial Terrorism There and Here (134)
In this section DD shows that both Dems and Nazis 1st unleashed 'orgies of terrorist violence on blacks and Jews' (respectively), then later moved from chaotic mob violence to est. and enforcing inst. of racism [and they want to do the same to their current enemies GOPers and cons e.g. lynching Brett CAVANAUGH, harassing Ted CRUZ, Sarah HUCKABEE, antifa campus violence ... 1st the mob suppression, later encoded into laws and inst]. DD already noted the close similarity of KKK and Nazi brownshirts. Interestingly, at their height during the 1920s-30s both were roughly the same size i.e. 3-5M members. Also attacked not just blks/Jews but also any political opponents (GOPers, RCCers, Gypsies ...). Americans visiting Germany in 1930s commented on this similarity, and Germans familiar w/the American South did too. But in 1890s Dems wanted to replace KKK racial terrorism w/state-sponsored discrimination, reflected in a comprehensive structure of segreg. laws. Along precisely the same lines some 40yrs later, the Nazis also wanted to move from brownshirts to Nuremberg Laws which would regularize and inst-ize the status enforcement. Both prided themselves in strange 'costumes' or uniforms, as they saw them (DD calls them 'campy'), elaborate hierarchies and 'cultic secrecy'. Both were paramilitary groups that believed in efficacy of violence, viewing it not as 'regrettable necessity' but rather 'as beautifully cleansing'. Both portrayed themselves as 'champions of social justice' (sound familiar in today's news of leftist tactics? like Hillary's recent comment that 'we can't be civil to those who want to destroy everything that's important to us'. The Nazis used Kristallnacht in Nov 1938 to 'enforce' their new status rules (burned Jewish homes, schools, synagogues, businesses, k. ~100, hauled many others to concentration camps). It seemed like an eerie re-enactment of of the KKK-instigated Tulsa race riot of 1921 as 1k's of Dem 'activists' rampaged thru blk neighborhoods, burning homes, looting businesses, k. dozens, detained 100s, left 1k's of blks homeless (136). But in both cases the ldrs wanted this type of random, chaotic enforcement to end in favor of more cntl'd and 'ofcl' methods. DD closes by noting the '1 drop rule' still applies in a way, pushing all w/any blk ancestry to ID as 'black' or face condemnation from Black Caucus or SPLC and other leftwing groups.
From Brownshirt Riots to Nuremberg Law (138)
DD says the Nazis followed Dems to a remarkable degree in this 'regularization' of violence via institutionalization into laws [kind of like how govts form, begin w/roving bandits, who eventually realize its much easier to become stationary ones, taxing and regulating v. randomly pillaging the plebes, cf Mancur OLSON bks]. In late 20s, early 30s HITLER's brownshirts, led by flamboyant gay Ernst ROEHM, ruled the streets the same way an inner-city gang rules a neighborhood (beating up or killing any opponents). HITLER encouraged this violence and he and ROEHM were closely allied. Yet once he came to power in 1933 (and had the tools of govt at his disposal), he came to view ROEHM as a threat (rival) i.e. the guy had his own army!? But HITLER now had the German army as well as the SS (ldr Heinrich HIMMLER), so he didn't need these low-life enforcers anymore (and they may turn on him, he reasoned). So HITLER sent Theodor EICKE (cmdt at Dachau) and another camp ofcr to 'rub out' ER, which they did. HITLER wanted to be the sole gang ldr. He now had GOEBBELS spread the word of no more 'emotional anti-Semitism' attacks, since now he'd use the govt to enforce 'rational anti-Sem'. At 1st HITLER proposed emigration and ghetto-ization for Jews (in 1935, 7yrs before 'Final Solution' was fully implemented). Also began dismissing any Jews in govt in 1933, adding an 'Aryan clause' to civil svc law. Soon after excluded from journalism, farming, teaching and theater. By 1938 from investment banking or the profesions of law and medicine. i.e. they did to Jews what they'd observed the Dems doing to blacks in the American South. It should by now be obvious that these 2 examples are precise equivalents; it isn't just that the Dems formed a useful precedent to the Nazis; the laws had 'the same functional purpose'. In this respect as in many others, the Nazis and Dems draw so close that it becomes increasingly difficult to tell one from the other! [obviously spring from same roots]
More kids from the fit; less from the unfit - that's the chf issue of b. cntl
- Margaret SANGER in (ed.) 'Birth Cntl Rev'
6 Disposable People (141)
How does highly abnormal and pathological behavior come to seem normal for some people? Of course it IS normal in the animal kingdom, but among humans its considered sick, depraved. History shows humans sometimes make the transition w/o much thot cf Hannah ARENDT's bk 'Banality of Evil'. What behaviors of ours will future gens see this way? Josef MENGELE (like many other Nazis) didn't appear abnormal when he arrived at Auschwitz in spring 1943 as physician and rsrch scientist. Just a workaholic, stickler and somewhat anal retentive doc (common traits in Germany). He attended many lectures of Ersnt RUDIN, a leading eugenic scholar, who inspired him. But MENGELE didn't see himself as a social or political activist, just a rsrcher of twins. His goal was disentangling nature v. nurture. Since he viewed kids of Germany's enemies (Jews, gypsies, Slavs, Russians) as 'disposable people' he was fine w/experimenting on them 'for the greater good'. Even in the 1970s he explained to his son Rolf the inmates would die anyway; his job was to separate 'sick' from 'fit' and advance science w/former. It was sanctioned by state, for a prog cause so what's the problem?
The Left's Own Mengele (143)
Today we see MENGELE's crimes as unthinkable and say 'never again' to the Holocaust, but its unlikely evil will re-appear in the same way. We comfort ourselves that it was an aberration. But as Robt PAXTON ('The Anatomy of Fascism' 2004) observes, American fascism is unlikely to resemble the German version. DD says an example of an 'American MENGELE' is Kermit GOSNELL ... and our version of the prestigious Kaiser Wilhelm Inst (that sanctioned MENGELE and others) is Planned Parenthood. He mentions the ghoulish videos released in May 2017 showing discussions of body parts for sale and special butchering techniques to preserve valuable parts (not to mention casual attitudes to same). Libs say GOSNELL 'went too far' but couldn't we say the same for MENGELE? Some Dems have even wondered why he was so bad? He's serving a life-sentence for 3 charges of murder. DD thinks he should get the death penalty. MENGELE should've too, but instead fled to Argentina and became [wait for it] an abortionist. He d1979 67yo of a stroke in San Paulo, Brazil.
The 1st Death Camps (146)
So far we've looked at connections between Nazis and Dems on slavery, Indian removal and racism by looking at the past. How about today? Dems have replaced their old rural plantations w/new urban ones called ghettos for blacks, barrios for Latinos and reservations for natives. They've turned millions of minorities into 'disposable people' whose lives don't matter to them and whose main utility is their fruitful dependency on Dems. There are some differences; slaves had to work but today's inmates don't; in fact Dems prefer they didn't since they want voters who rely on them for basic necessities, don't want them getting any 'ideas' about free enterprise, self-betterment ... Also, modern inmates can leave the system, unlike slaves. While old plantations CAN be compared to concentration camps, the new urban ones can't. But DD wants to examine Nazi-Dem parallels that still apply today. He wonders how they can get away w/this, esp. since they love calling conservatives 'racists and Nazis' i.e. you'd think it would be dangerous to bring those up if they're practicing them currently. This seems to indicate 'not just chutzpah but also extreme resourcefulness' (147). It requires some BIG LIES. They must not only take their own links w/Nazis and blame them on the Right, but also CONTINUE behaving in ways that betray those links!? This requires 1 a new name for their practices (to hide its past) and 2 a new strategy that still achieves the old objectives [exploitation]. So this is the story of how the Left learned to become so crafty. The Nazis' 'dress rehearsal for the Holocaust' was the 1933 Law for Preventing Offspring w/Hereditary Diseases' which between 1939-41 led to 200k 'defectives' being euthanized in gas chambers. The Nazis who ran this program later became the ldrs of the Holocaust i.e. 'the 1.6M Jews killed at Treblinka, Chelmni, Belzec and Sobibor' [148, and Auschwitz]. Calling it 'euthanization' was of course a lie.
Learning from the Progs (149)
So who's responsible for this 1st 'death camp' crime? The Nazis of course, but where did they get the idea? From US progs!? He refers not just to Dems now but the late 19C, early 20C 'leftist movement to reform labor laws and working conditions but ALSO obsessively concerned w/social improvement thru race-based immig restriction and elimination of so-called inferior, unfit and disposable people'. Yes, some GOPers were also progs e.g. TR (only became a prog AFTER he left GOP after 2 terms as Pres). Even then TR's soft prog-ism stood in contrast w/WW's hard version rooted in [S Dem] racist eugenicist philosophy. Its at least conceivable that WW would've embraced Nazi forced sterilization laws had he lived, but NOT TR. So DD isn't indicting ALL progs, just those who are the political and spiritual ancestors of the [radical] ones we have now. US progs not only outpaced the Nazis in mass programs of forced incarceration and sterilization, but they SHOWED the Nazis how to implement them! The Nazis even ack'd and appreciated this example. Progs at the time even boasted of providing this example to the admired HITLER regime. All this has been 'swept under the rug' by prog historians. 1st prog success was when IN passed its 1907 law for forced sterilization of 'confirmed criminals, idiots, imbeciles and rapists' [i.e. 'deplorables']. Over next 30yrs 26 other states passed similar laws. By 1930s when Nazis came to pwr, US states were sterilizing 2-4k / yr, and in all ~65k were done. Progs also persuaded states to pass marriage restriction laws prohibiting whites and blacks from marrying. These were based on the ack'd principle of black inferiority, and supported by social pressure v. all minorities e.g. natives, hispanics ... For progs this would preserve 'the racial stock' from being swamped and contaminated by 'useless, unfit' DNA. 3rd prong was immig restriction e.g. 1924 prog Immig Act that sharply reduced immig by preferring N Europeans aka 'Nordics' and discouraging Asians, Africans, S Americans, even S/C Europeans. Amazing how they today bash Trump's immig limits when THEY pioneered this. But the centerpiece of the prog enterprise in America was eugenics; originally conceived in England by Francis GALTON, cousin of Chas DARWIN. FG was applying CD's 'survival of fittest' theory to humanity and sought to 'breed' humanity like animals had always been i.e. selecting best genes only to go forward. Tho the idea came from England, it was put into practice in America [by 'proglodytes']. Many prog organizations were founded to promote this ... names ... US champions were Chas DAVENPORT, Harry LAUGHLIN, Leon WHITNEY, Madison GRANT, Paul POPENOE, Eugene GOSNEY ... in England H G WELLS, J M KEYNES ... in Germany (Marxists) Karl KAUTSKY and Eduard DAVID, Alfred PLOETZ (since 1880s, lived to see Nazi regime), Ernst RUDIN, Fritz LENS, Eugen FISCHER ... many 'experts' met and discussed these ideas at intl conferences, at which US was seen as #1 and Germany #2 in 'sophistication' of eugenics. 3rd Intl Conf held 1932 in NYC, likely most signif cf Edwin BLACK's bk 'The War Against the Weak'.
Controlling 'Human Weeds' (153)
Shady figure PP fndr Margaret SANGER; even the leading eugenicists shunned her as lacking academic credentials and something of a crackpot! They warned each other she could bring their whole movement into disrepute. Thru her life she shamelessly championed eugenics and sought approval from peers. She pushed for govt 'permits' to have babies, even ID-ing 5M Americans as 'mental or moral degenerates', fit only for sterilization. In 1932 article proposed 'farmlands and homesteads' where unfit would be separated from general pop and taught to work under supv and prevented from reproducing (hmmm, like conc camps). Like all progs of the time, she was a blatant racist, even spoke for a women's KKK mtg in NJ. She worked w/black ministers since 'we don't want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro pop and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members' (155). Many prog biographers of her dishonestly try to mask the centrality of eugenics to her worldview. As we know by now this is part of 'the Big Lie'. Her views and Nazism were cut from same cloth, as she herself realized. Her 2 close associates Clarence GAMBLE and Lothrop STODDARD became avid Nazi sympathizers who sought to bring their ideas to America (including ones that didn't orig here). STODDARD even went to Germany and met w/FISCHER, LENZ, HIMMLER and von RIBBENTROP, even got a mtg w/HITLER himself. His 1940 bk 'Into the Darkness' is a paean to HITLER and Nazi eugenics. Her Apr 1933 article in her mag Birth Cntl Rvw advocated Nazi techniques for eliminating 'human weeds'.
Hitler's American Example (156)
HITLER seems not to have heard of SANGER, but was already a Social Darwinist when he entered Landsberg Prison (imprisoned after Beer Hall Putsch '23, rel. 12-20-24). He saw peoples and nations in a struggle for 'survival of fittest' cf Richard WEIKART's bk 'From Darwin to Hitler'. Tho he wanted to see Germany as ldr he had to admit that America was ahead in limiting immig from 'weaker' peoples, calling it (ahead of Germany) a 'slow beginning [to] a view which is peculiar to the 'Volkish' state concept' (i.e. America 1st, amounts to govt mgmnt towward that goal, hmmm). So keep them out or at least from reproducing and swamping the master race. In classic prog fashion HITLER presents these ideas not as assaults on humanitarianism but as its best fulfillment. Remarkably, HITLER knew there were religious conservatives in America who opposed these laws as 'draconian and excessive'. He scorned them as 'liars and hypocrits'. Progs sometimes portray HITLER as a soc-con dedicated to marriage and traditional family [and Christian faith], but he viewed marriage [and the others] not as an end in itself but in service to the higher goal of increasing and preserving the [master] race. So not about love or joy, just a way to serve collective goals of state and species! No trad-con will agree to this, but many progs did and still do. HITLER read many American eugenicist writings in prison, sharing them w/his friend Rudolf HESS, later a Nazi ldr who popularized the slogan 'Nazism is nothing but applied biology'. HITLER esp. liked Leon WHITNEY and Madison GRANT's writings which extolled Nordic racial superiority. They both rcv'd ltrs from HITLER which they proudly showed to each other. Stefan KUHL says progs understood Nazi policies as the direct realization of their own scientific goals and pol. demands.
Covering its Tracks (159, after WWII)
George FREDERICKSON said the term 'racism' didn't come into wide use until the 1930s and that it was HITLER who gave it a bad name. While the old progs relished their assoc w/HITLER, post-war ones have worked hard at coverup. A key book here is Richard HOFSTADTER's 'Social Darwinism in America' of 1944, even before the Allies liberated the concentration camps and Nazi atrocities were fully exposed. His aim was to redefine Social Darwinism, severing its link w/prog eugenics, and link it instead to the pol. Right. RH was a leftist who'd once been a member of the Commie Party, said he joined since 'I don't like capitalism'. He built his case around Herbert SPENCER's phrase 'survival of fittest', which he said is the essence of laissez-faire capitalism. He devoted most of bk to HS and Wm SUMNER who also used that rhetoric (virtually alone among pro-capitalists). Had RH bothered to research it, he'd have noticed that most businessmen had never heard of either of those men nor of 'Social Darwinism'. If they'd had any philosophical basis for their profession, it would more likely be Adam SMITH or HAYEK v. DARWIN or SPENCER. Toward the end of RH's book he mentions the connection between Soc-Dar and eugenics, calling it 'accidental' and minor, even calling American eugenics a [passing] 'fad' i.e. a whitewash. Progs rushed to praise his 'big lie', calling the book a masterpiece, helping it become the standard work on the subject. Today even many progs admit it was deeply flawed, but it continues to define the conventional wisdom on the Left. RH's book might've worked accept the Left wanted to continue its eugenic agenda, so they had to redefine it to 'travel on a different passport'. But they also had to tweak it by making it about not 'racial cleansing' but (as Agnes FRANK points out in her 2005 Sanger bio) 'population cntl' in 60s-70s. But DD says for the past 20yrs or so eugenics has marched under the new banner 'pro-choice'. Progs try to obscure SANGER's fnding of PP, since she certainly didn't support 'choice'. This is a good trick too, pretending to support 'choice' but 'avidly propagandizing for abortion and also lobbying for govt funding', pretending to just 'counsel' women but REALLY pushing them to abort, thus more profits for them (and fewer 'deplorable' babies). So incredibly, DD says, the old eugenic objective is now accomplished under the apparently neutral framework of 'choice' [gotta admit: Satan's clever]. Not only is abortion seen as a constitutional right (does NOT appear in Const, those are 'negative' rights or liberty -> 'lib-ism of restraint' acc to FT's R R RENO) but (unlike other Const rights) is FUNDED by the govt (positive liberty -> [crusading] lib-ism of empwrment). Govt support transforms this 'right' from state-sanctioned to state-sponsored killing. >50M babies have been aborted since 1973 Roe v. Wade, a genocide that far exceeds the Nazi Holocaust. So the Left has succeeded beyond SANGER's wildest [twisted] dreams, even while divesting her of her eugenic record and making her into a cultural icon, the way MENGELE would've liked to be remembered. How proud and jealous she and the Nazis would be, and for progs the big lie has paid off big-time. DD wonders where the Left got this amazing strategy; he's been pondering it a long time, and it finally hit him. They got it from their own past, from their own century-old Dem approach to dealing w/plantation slavery. 'Choice' after all was the rallying cry of N Dems led by IL Sen Stephen DOUGLAS i.e. 'I don't personally advocate it but others should have the CHOICE' (sound familiar?). Its identical w/modern Libs' sidestepping that 'I don't personally support abortion but ...'. Only difference was DOUGLAS spoke of communities making the choice, moderns of individuals. Just as 19C Dems ignored any choice by slaves, moderns ignore the baby's. In both cases those are seen as 'a tool for someone else's benefit or convenience, a non-person or at least an entirely disposable person. In this respect the lethal and dehumanizing Nazi mindset lives on'.
7 American Fuehrers (165)
Many passages in FDR's bk could've been written by a Nazi. Once can assume he feels considerable affinity w/the Nazi philosophy.
- Nazi newspaper 'Voelkischer Beobachter' rvw of FDR's bk 'Looking Forward'
In the early 30s newly inaug'd FDR admin made a fateful decision; decided NOT to attempt to make America into a socialist country [tho no doubt they were tempted]. That would require extensive natl-zation of industry i.e. govt t/o of pvt sector so of course would involve massive disruption (and aggressive opposition). So what road did they choose instead? Here's where the leftist 'big lie' narrative kicks in. According to FDR flacks, he chose a 'middle way' between socialism and capitalism, the path of the welfare state, 'turning prog-ism into the savior of American capitalism'. The story continues that this 'rescued the economy and allowed it to win WWII'. FDR is of course 'canonized' as a hero of the Left. Later progs e.g. LBJ and Obama all sought to likewise expand govt pwr by invoking the FDR model (and attendant lies). LBJ's 'Great Society' self-consciously built on FDR's New Deal [also JFK's 'New Frontier']. And Obamacare and his fed t/o of banking/finance after the 08 crash followed that pattern too. Same for energy industry (killing coal ... pushing 'climate chg'). Then there's govt-run 'screwels' ... tho the Left still loves citing the 'middle way', the actual technical name for their path is FASCISM! Its what MUSSOLINI (via Giovanni GENTILE) and HITLER actually advocated. Not actual state ownership (they knew they had no idea how to run industries) but state-run 'crony' capitalism i.e. putting the industrial might of the private sector at the behest of the state. The Nazis called it 'Gemeinnutz vor Eigennutz' [group before individuals i.e. collectivism (common good v. ind. good). Now DD knows the Left will push back on calling FDR a fascist. Didn't he lead America to FIGHT them? He SAVED America from the Depression and the Nazis, right? Prog historians like Arthur SCHLESINGER Jr and Wm LEUCHTENBURG call him 'one of, if not THE' greatest presidents. Even some on Right fall for it e.g. Seymour Martin LIPSET in Hoover Digest. They have 'a molecule of truth amid a slew of bunkum' (167); its true FDR prefigures modern-day 'anti-fascists' [Antifa], but FDR et al 'are far closer to fascism/Nazism than they care to admit'. FDR is the one who set the modern American Left on its fascist road, but to see this we must 'dispel the miasma of prog myth-making'. 1st, FDR didn't defeat HITLER (tho we DID defeat Japan under TRUMAN w/A-bombs). Richard EVANS says the USSR was the decisive force in defeating Germany i.e. the Wehrmacht was destroyed in its failed effort to t/o Moscow and Stalingrad, and in subsequent Soviet counter-attack. At Most, FDR helped accelerate HITLER's ultimate defeat by opening up a new front in Europe [Normandy, Italy] and providing Lend-Lease to Allies. America DID liberate conc camps, but these were LABOR camps; that's why there were survivors, tho most not Jews (v. death camps). Timothy SNYDER shows in 'Bloodlands' that all the d. camps where in Soviet-occupied territory e.g. Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, Chelmno and Majdanek. No survivors and mostly destroyed by Germans before Allies got there. FDR leading America into fascist Germany/Italy is analogous to Martin LUTHER leading Prots v. RCCers i.e. doesn't mean they didn't share affinities (like a 'civil war' or intramural conflict, w/in 'houses of Christendom [16-7C] ... fascism [20C]' or Sunni/Shia, Leninist/Trotskyist ... i.e. bitterest fights among 'ideological relatives'). Ira KATZNELSON (prog) says what finally ended Depression wasn't New Deal policies but postwar 'animal spirits'.
Plates are here, between pp168-9:
1 if GOP had acted like Antifa, Left would be apoplectic, but it now praises Antifa (pic); 25-pt Nazi Party platform 'reads like Dem's today'
2 HITLER/MUSSOLINI walking together, BOTH socialists, moved 'seamlessly from Marxism to fascism, all fndrs of fascism in Germany, Italy, France and England were from pol. Left'; Berkeley protesters show of Left has learned to use Nazi tactics of censorship, intimidation and violence while posing as the ones fighting Nazism
3 Unlike Nazi book-burners (Berlin 5-10-33), modern left simply doesn't assign bks or hire profs that contradict its ideology and big lies; the Nazis invented the technique of turning street thugs into ideological saints e.g. Nazi brownshirt Horst WESSEL (k. in urban brawl) 'martyrized' as Trayvon MARTIN et al later were (tho at least GOEBBELS didn't say HW 'could've been my son' like OBAMA did); FREUD ID'd 'transference' as a phenon involving shifting blame/resp i.e. describes how Left blame their own practices of enslavement, genocide, racism and fascism on the very cons who've fought these evils from the beginning
4 1st conc camps were S Dem slave plantations, those and Nazis' where closed systems that not only exploited labor of 'inferiors' but also disfigured their moral personalities (pic of slaves cut-up back); HITLER's 'lebensraum' was inspired by Andrew JACKSON's forced relocation, land-stealing and genocide v. Indians (pic of 'Indian Land for Sale')
5 leftie Eric FONER said KKK was 'for 30yrs the domestic terrorist arm of the Dem Party' i.e. a sister-org of Nazi brownshirts, both pvt terrorist militias using similar tactics to intimidate and murder pol. opponents and racial minorities; we all know the fndr of Marxism and philosopher of capitalism (Adam SMITH), but Giovanni GENTILE is mostly unknown, tho he's fndr of fascism (Left bur. him so no-one would 'out' them as following his 'tireless advocacy of centralized state i.e. 'we're the state and the state is us' (d/l or scan pic)
6 Josef MENGELE k. kids (experiments), later an abortionist in Argentina, his counterparts can be found among PP ofcls who offer fetal body parts for sale and Philly abortionist Kermit GOSNELL; young JFK on his PT boat, returned from 1930s Germany trips with 'effusive praise for HITLER and Nazis' esp claims of 'Nordic superiority', thot anti-Hitlerians were 'just jealous' and as late as 1945 called HITLER 'a legend'
7 Martin HEIDEGGER, fave among lefties for his atheism, environmentalism and anti-capitalism, also a lifelong anti-Semite, devoted fan of HITLER, and champion of Nazi 'Gleichschaltung' to bring German cultural inst's into line w/fuehrer; leftists introduced fascist tactics at Cornell Univ 1969 when armed, leftist thugs t/o library, student union and radio station there, threatening the lives of profs who didn't submit to their 'nonnegotiable demands', today some of those same thugs run Cornell
8 pic of HITLER giving 'salute', he hated Jews in part because he saw them as greedy capitalists from the shady world of finance who didn't contrib their fair share to larger society, sounds familiar, right? Indeed echos Dems' anti-Wall St rhetoric, anti-'1%-er', 'Occupy Wall St' ...; cartoon of Nazi brownshirt on left, Antifa thug on right, drawn by A F BRANCO specifically for this bk
But to see the affinity of FDR, HITLER, MUSSOLINI ... we have to remove our post-WWII blinders that've been put there by prog historiography. He'll help us see how much they all admired one another and saw themselves on 'same side' of struggle pre-war. He warns us that fascism, like prog-ism is NOT any kind of 'middle way' and that's a key part of the Big Lie. In reality they're ALL forms of leftism i.e. use of govt pwr to t/o parts of pvt sector and CNTL it. All march AWAY from free-mkt capitalism, so no 'middle path' at all. Socialism has been largely abandoned [til 2020 electioneering] tho still pushed by elites at universities and think-tanks. Fascism is ofcly dead but lives on as prog-ism [roots carefully cvr'd]. FDR was in this respect America's 1st fuehrer or Duce, tho ground was prep'd by proto-fascist WW. All admired HITLER/MUSSOLINI and vice versa i.e. a 'mutual admiration society'.
It Did Happen Here (170)
He tells of NYT reporter Anne McCORMICK who returned to WA DC from Rome 2mos after FDR was elected, noting the atmosphere there 'is strangely reminiscent of Rome in the 1st weeks after the March of the Black Shirts'. She found this odd and delightful, intending it as praise, not criticism, for FDR! She loved that FDR was acting like Il Duce and patterning his New Deal after Italian fascism. She loved the 'solidarity' Italians felt under the 'elan' of its leader, and the 'conviction of invincible strength' Italians felt in the weeks after MUSSOLINI's invasion of Ethiopia. Similiarly, she felt the US was (w/Italy) 'marching forward' toward a corporatist, state-led federation of industry, labor and govt. The ldr got a sort of 'unanimous pwr of atty' to 'get'r done'. She and many others also saw HITLER in this way, as if everyone craved 'marching orders'. The term 'dictator ... didn't have the bad odor it does now' (171). Fascists like to say '[ldr] is [nation] and vice versa' (like 'Sun King' KoF Louis XIV's 'l'etat, cest moi'). Sadly, these views weren't marginal i.e. held only by outliers and cranks, but were mainstream (WWI k. old mainstream and this was 'new normal' i.e. 'A World Undone, On Edge ...'. Flamboyant Italian aviation minister Italo BALBO came to the US for the Chicago World's Fair [cf '1927' bk, flew all around country]. He'd been one of the original blackshirts and came of age as a fascist organizer [like OBAMA w/macho i.e. 'community org-r'], key org-r of Duce's March on Rome. He was treated like a hero in America by TIME, Sat Ev Post ... got a massive ticker tape parade in NYC ... all felt Italian fascism had lots to teach America [at least all progs felt that, cons were likely scared and outraged]. Meanwhile, US univ elites were also courting HITLER, even after the Nazi's notorious 1933 book burning ... examples of elites 'in bed' w/fascists ... Cole PORTER even wrote in his song 'You're the top! You're the Great Houdini! You're the top! You're Mussolini ...' but of course it was chg'd later i.e. once progs realized the need for the 'big lie'. All these things just 'disappeared into the fog of history' (helped along by prog 'historians' [propagandists]).
Note: thot occurred to me this AM 6-7-19 that, just as UK [valuably] 'balanced' continental pwrs, US should've done same worldwide, so e.g. WWI NOT allowed UK to dominate world's waters, starvation blockade on Germany ... instead of joining Allies should've played 'ref' like UK had long done in Europe ... hmmm.
The Proto-Fascist (173)
While this chapter focuses on FDR - our unack'd American fuehrer - WW also needs to be discussed. Remember that FDR was Navy Sec'y under WW and never publicly dissented from any of WW's actions described here (i.e. learned at the master's feet). Indeed FDR et al spoke of New Deal as a continuation of WW's policies. DD says WW's proto-fascism matured [soured] into FDR's full-blown fascism. Friedrich NIETZSCHE was HITLER's fave philosopher, d. in 1880s and tho he 'detested German natl-ism and was NOT an anti-Semite', HITLER loved his discussions of uber- and unter-menschen i.e. those on top and those marked for elimination (or at least domination). N, H and M all wanted to 'throw off' the moral restraints of Christianity as they 'took the gloves off' in the inevitable struggle for power and survival of fittest (DARWIN). Part of this thinking included a desire for 'a storm to come' in order to 'wipe inferior beings from the Earth ... to shake all the rotten and worm-eaten fruit from the tree' (174). So DD sees both WW and FN as proto-fascists. WW, a disciple of HEGEL, he esp. loved HEGEL's apotheosis to the all-powerful state. Having studied under German mentors [and of course having grown up in the authoritarian South], his model for govt was BISMARCK's militaristic Prussia. WW ridiculed the US Fndrs, 1st pres to do so, calling their ideas re ind rights, decentralized pwr, checks and balances ... simple-minded and outdated. He wanted a strong centralized govt to impose order on (otherwise) chaos i.e. the essense of fascism [worship of pwr]. DD realizes this may sound 'off' to those raised on prog humbug of WW as 'champion of global democracy and self-determination', but says WW had a chance to promote both but in fact promoted neither. Had he actively fought for the self-determination of Germany post-WWI, he might've prevented WWII. Most realize that had Germany known the terms of Versaille they'd never have agreed, and also that those terms virtually guaranteed WWII i.e. 'this is not a peace, only a 20yr ceasefire' (cf PatB's CHUW bk). He could've insisted on it, but didn't, giving the lie to his pretty words (all he cared about was his precious 'League of Nations' i.e. fascism for the world w/HIM in chg). If we look at what he DID (v. said) we see 1 implemented racist policies thruout fed govt and helped revive KKK by WH viewing of 'Birth of a Nation' and 2 suppressed civil liberties of Americans in a way never seen before or since [un-American, but quite fascist]. Progs know this but profess to be 'mystified'. This is of course just more 'big lie[ing]'. They act like its 'bizarre or anomalous' that a prog would be racist, anti-civil-liberties and proto-fascist, but by now we know its certainly NOT (more like a return to roots). DD says the whole point of this bk is to show that this is the predictable, if not inevitable, course of prog-ism and the Left. Of COURSE WW was racist, as were most of his Dem predecessors going back to Andrew JACKSON! And of COURSE he engaged in fascist-style suppression of ind liberties; this is how collectivists of all stripes typically behave once in power [a bad case of the normals]. WW segregated the fed govt for the 1st time since Civil War; most people don't know that post-Civil War it was NOT, tho S states of course were. WW's actions were bitterly protested by GOPer Booker T WA. A grp of blk ldrs incl Ida B WELLS confronted WW in WA DC, but he told them it was 'for their own good'; he was after all an 'unabashed white supremacist' (as a S Dem). In WWI WW created a propaganda ministry that became a forerunner to similar ones under MUSSOLINI and HITLER i.e. outright bullying and intimidation of press and pol. opposition [cf 'deep state' v. TRUMP], Jonah GOLDBERG writes that WW's operation was more effective i.e. ruthless (than MUSSOLINI's, but can't beat Nazi SS). WW's op makes 1950s McCarthyism seem like child's play. In fact 10s of 1ks of Americans were arrested in WWI by the notorious [AG] Palmer Raids (JG: more in a few years than under MUSSOLINI in the entire 1920s).
Looking to Mussolini (178)
If Woodrow WILSON (WW) was America's proto-fuehrer, then FDR was 'at least for a time' our actual one! This isn't DD's term, but was coined by Germany's leading newspaper (Frankfurter Zeitung) comparing the 2 'supreme leaders' (and they didn't mean it as an insult). In this section DD vindicates this claim by 1 examining FDR's enthusiasm for MUSSOLINI (and later HITLER, he wasn't alone, widespread among prog's) and 2 HITLER/MUSSOLINI's praise for FDR. DD says FDR had no personal affection for HITLER, tho he DID for MUSSOLINI. He even dispatched his 2 of his 'brain trusters' to Italy to study Il Duce's 'administrative structure' for ideas for USA. Rexford TUGWELL returned noting M 'certainly has the same [types of enemies] as FDR'. He thought fascism 'the cleanest, neatest, most efficient operating piece of social machinery I've even seen, makes me envious' (like dictator's agreeing 'gun control works' [for whom?]). In the UK Fabians like George Bernard SHAW and utopian (dystopian?) leftist novelist H G WELLS loved what they saw, calling for more of it in UK. But US admirers were even more devoted to Italian fascism than European progs; lefty Ida TARBELL interviewed M in 1926 for (Canadian) McCall's mag and heaped on praise (a 'puff' piece). Like muckraker Lincoln STEFFENS' saying of USSR 'I've seen the future and it works' [for whom?]. All progs seemed [then and now] to push 'liberty' aside in favor of 'security' (requiring of course a HUGE govt v. a limited one for liberty). They saw their job as 'abolishing fear' (FDR's 4 freedoms, of 1 speech, 2 worship, and from 3 want, 4 fear). Prog writer Horace KALLEN (early champ of multiculturalism) said its a mistake to call fascism (or communism) tyrannical, since they're experiments in social justice and we need to apply 'patience and judge only by results' [ignoring 100s of millions dead, apparently, again, good for WHOM?!]. Charles BEARD was known for his [typically prog] attacks on US founders as 'selfish, landed capitalists' and saw M's heavy-handedness as a positive trait (like STALIN's 'gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet'). Herbert CROLY of New Republic celebrated M's 'arousing in a whole nation an increased moral energy' [collectivism, confusion of 'moral' with 'what I want']. Also liked that citizens were 'subordinated [to state] to a deeply-felt common purpose' (yikes). New Republic writer George SOULE liked New Deal's kinship to M's policies; their mag praised M thruout the 1920s, even pub'd an art by Giuseppe PREZZOLINI who wrote that true socialism would be realized NOT in Russia by Bolshies but in Italy by blackshirts! Lefty economist Wm PEPPERELL called the New Deal 'Fabian Fascism' at a Prague conf. WI Prog Party fndr Gov Philip La FOLLETTE had 2 framed pics in his ofc; SCJ Louis BRANDEIS (prog) and MUSSOLINI, called them 'my 2 personal heroes'. Some (not all) on the left went further and praised Nazism e.g. Gertrude STEIN in 1937 (rec'd HITLER for Nobel prize). Prog W E B De BOIS praised HITLER's dictatorship as 'absolutely necessary to get the state in order' and even said 'Nazi anti-Semitism is based on reasoned prejudice or economic fear' (v. S racism which he considered irrational !? 1 modeled on the other).
With Compliments from Hitler (182, 'Gruesse vom Fuehrer')
So we've seen what progs thought of fascists and Nazis, how about vice versa? He starts w/MUSSOLINI's high praise of FDR's book 'Looking Foward', calling it 'a welcome repudiation of classical liberalism'. New Deal 'boldly interventionist in the field of econ'. MUSSOLINI and FDR were in touch even before FDR was inaug'd, and initially M was much more favorable to FDR than to HITLER. Irving COBB (journalist) told ll Duce that many Americans called him 'the Italian Roosevelt', and M was thrilled. DD cites progs who note 'the strange fact' that Nazis often praised FDR's New Deal. 'Big Lie alert' DD says, this isn't strange at ALL, since they're cut from the same cloth! HITLER himself told a NYT correspondent that he viewed FDR as traveling down the same path as himself.
Ecco Un Dictatore! [behold a dictator] (184)
Finally DD shows how chillingly close FDR came to becoming a fascist dict during his long tenure in office 1932-45. If not a full-scale despot, he came closer than anyone else in US history. DD says predictable leftist outrage at this is just part of the Big Lie. HOOVER saw early how the close FDR was to fascism, and so did uber-lefty Norman THOMAS (socialist). Even Walter LIPPMANN in 1933 told FDR 'you have no alternative but to assume dictatorial powers'. We can't say he was a dictator in the HITLER mode since he never had HITLER's absolute power (nor did MUSSOLINI) and of course didn't murder his enemies, gas the Jews or start a world war. So FDR was a fuehrer 'in the American way' v. German or Italian ways. A better comparison is FDR and M, both of whom saw themselves as a kind of national boss, overriding the constraints of democracy [Congress, lobbies, bureaucracy] while still functioning w/in pol limits imposed by their respective systems. HITLER had the most power, then M, and FDR. We can thank the US Const [and our const system] for keeping FDR from bringing full-scale fascism to America. FDR's NRA was an attempt to 'kill the free market in the US'. When M heard of it he said 'Ecco Un Dictatore' [Behold a Dictator]. FDR picked Gen Hugh JOHNSON (a fascist) to run it, and he carried around a propaganda pamphlet written by Duce sidekick Raffaello VIGONE and translated to English by Oswald MOSLEY's Brit Fascist Party in 1933. To FDR's (and progs') dismay, tho, the NRA was struck down by the SCOTUS in its landmark 1935 Schechter Poultry Corp v. US decision. Other New Deal acts were also overturned. FDR responded by threatening to 'pack' the court in 1937, his mindset shown by a comment from top aide Harry HOPKINS that 'I want to assure you we have lawyers who'll declare ANYTHING you want to do legal!' (to a NYC conference of New Deal activists). Basically 'to hell w/the rules, we'll make our own damn rules!' ('batches, batches, we don need no stinking batches!'). The SC panic'd and did a rapid turnabout, giving in to FDR [tho '4 horsemen' fought] in 'the switch in time that saved 9'. This led to the end of econ liberty as a const right. Tho not as thorough as FDR wanted, watered down by 'checks and balances', FDR gave us the welfare state, like BISMARCK's in 19C Germany ['moderate cons prog-ism' !?]. The Left then set about expanding it from there [to this day]. So FDR laid foundations to continually undermine econ liberty, creating Leviathan govt [or did Lincoln spark that?]. FDR used 'classic fascist despot' tactics by using govt power to intimidate private cos and citizens into submission. e.g. his 'Blue Eagle' symbol was 'suggested' for use by corps and citizens to say we're 'on board' w/'the plan' (else face ostracism and worse i.e. mob rule). Just like swastika and 'Heil Hitler' salute in Germany, a public test of compliance (to gleichschaltung). One historican called it 'voluntary compulsion'. Like H and M, FDR established a massive govt propaganda machine and essentially forced all public comm cos to 'tow the line' or have their licenses revoked.
A Pact w/Racism (189)
Finally, FDR cozied to and made deals w/the worst racists in America. DD isn't saying HE was a racist (don't know), but he worked closely w/them in Dem party to help each other. This aspect draws FDR closer to Nazism than fascism, also part of Big Lie propaganda which progs try to cover up. 1st he appt'd frmr KKKer Hugo BLACK to SC, completely unqual, but enthusiastic New Dealer who'd publicly endorsed court-pkg plan (i.e. a Party man). Active Klan member who'd spoken at rallies/marches thruout his native AL (FDR later claimed he hadn't known this, right [it was on HB's resume]). FDR also supported Dem efforts in Congress to thwart anti-lynching laws, a key condition of their support. Also agreed to cut blks out of most New Deal programs incl SS and Unempl benefits (again insisted on by Dems). Not til 1954 when GOP cntl'd all 3 branches did these restrictions finally get removed. FDR also continued segregation w/in Fed govt (of WW), tho he had the pwr to unilaterally reduce/suspend it. Again, exc for Big Lie suckers, none of this should be a 'surprise'. Finally FDR interned >120k Jap-Americans in WWII in 'conc camps' [all-purpose Nazi-Dem solution]. Hard not to agree w/Jap-Amer's that he treated them like HITLER did Jews (exc killing of course).
Tricksters on the Left (191)
The 1st one (prog trickster cvr-ing up Dem-fascist link) was FDR himself, in his 4-29-38 speech warning that democracy isn't safe if people tolerate growth of private power to the point where it becomes stronger than the state itself. He continued by explaining this is fascism i.e. ownership of govt by an individual, group or any other cntl-ing pvt pwr. But here's a Big Lie alert; fascism is NOT pvt cntl of govt, its govt cntl of pvt sector! While goosing govt pwr as all fascists do, he claimed he was doing this to 'save' American democracy from fascist cntl of govt by pvt businesses. He inverts the meaning of fascism to make it look like his GOP opponents are the fascists and he's 'Antifa' (they're pulling same trick). Since this by now is transparent, prog historian Ira KATZNELSON uses a more subtle approach; just as he blames Dem Party's racism on 'the South' [i.e. America, 'us'], he admits FDR used some ugly tactics to keep his coalition together, but justifies it all by saying it was worth it since 'the New Deal became possible' [end justifies means (but we don't like ends either)]. DD also explains this is a fascist arguement i.e. ANYTHING is permitted as long as it leads to more govt power, so 'fasces-ism' or power-worship is behind it. DD concludes chapter by saying not only was FDR our 1st fuehrer, but he helped create armies of American brownshirts on the Left that are still w/us today [community organizers, street thugs, mob rule ...].
8 Politics of Intimidation (195)
The legitimation of violence v. a demonized internal enemy brings us close to the heart of fascism.
- Robt PAXTON 'The Anatomy of Fascism' 2004
The Left still hasn't recovered from the shock of TRUMP's election. DD says their unremitting [psychotic] rage and the volume / vehemence of resistance is something he hasn't seen before. They're demonstrating the truth of the quote above; don't want to just thwart him, they want him defeated, humiliated, GONE. So where's this coming from? You'd think the Dem Party, but they're weak both in WA DC and in the states, so there must be another power center. Some Trumpsters talk of a 'deep state' but DD is skeptical about that (certainly there IS bureaucratic resistance, but that's something he can deal with as head of govt). No, the Left's power isn't from any covert conspiracy but rather from their 'big 3' institutions; academia, Hollywood (entertainment) and media (news), the 3 most powerful megaphones of our culture, especially for young people. In a dem society whoever controls the info flow cntl's public opinion that ulitimately decides all questions. This is the strongest, deadliest weapon of prog-ism and the Dem Party. Without it they couldn't mount the kind of scorched-earth opposition they have v. TRUMP. While GOP cntl of govt (2/3) is temporary, the Left's 'big 3' is [seems] permanent. He discusses how the Left weeds out any conservatives they discover operating in these 3 areas, often using 'diversity' as an excuse. He says the reason we have independent right-wing media is BECAUSE we've been locked out of MSM (Rush: 'I AM equal time!'). This is institutionalized intimidation (signals to all, esp young, 'we can/will destroy you if you don't tow the line').
Culture of Intimidation (198)
How did we get here? After all the old Hollywood of 1930s-50s was dominated by Jewish immigrants who believed in the American dream and America as a force for good in the world. Cons like RR, John WAYNE and Jimmy STEWART had a place in Hollywood. But the media always leans left (Walter CRONKITE said 'it seems natural that reporters should be liberals' hmmm). DD says there used to be SOME conservatives but by now they've all been rooted out. 'We live today in one of the most closed, exclusionary, repressive cultures in modern history'. The Left doesn't bother w/witch hunts, they just don't hire any conservatives in the 1st place! Often prevented from even speaking on campuses. All dissenting voices are hounded, shamed, terrorized, often not just to silence them but to destroy their careers and lives [Gen FLYNN ...]. Demonization is the Left's order of business these days. This is why so many GOPers are RINOs, they FEAR what the Left can do to them. Also, violent protesters and criminal thugs are celebrated in today's media and academy e.g. Bill AYERS, Bernadine DOHRN ... In the prog universe, thugs become celebrities e.g. Che GUEVARA, Trayvon MARTIN. How did things get so perverted? Allen BLOOM's 'Closing of American Mind' is conventional answer (picked up by Jonah GOLDBERG's 'Liberal Fascism') i.e. it all traces back to 1960s w/students t/o campuses [fascist-style]. Bloom's colleague Walter BERNS read their statements at Cornell, noting excerpts lifted right out of MUSSOLINI's speeches, cheering wildly, unaware they were cheering fascism! BLOOM blames 'craven submission' by administrators to these leftist thugs (libs saw them as innocent 'liberals in a hurry'). Most conservatives and centrists left soon after, DD says they were offered 'submit or die'. Today leftists don't have to challenge 'the establishment' since they ARE the est. on campuses (and ...). So BLOOM has good points but doesn't go far enough. Where did they get those fascist ideas? Who taught them? DD: the Nazis (masters of bullying, intimidation, terror). We've seen the parallels thruout this bk but this is probably the most glaring. The Nazis created a state-w/in-the-state and invented the type of systematic cultural coordination, propaganda techniques and aggressive bullying and intimidation that's now the MO of the prog Left.
Progressive 'Gleichschaltung' (202)
This Nazi term means 'bringing all society into line w/leftist priorities of Nazism' [pol. correctness backed up by threats]. At its core its a doctrine of pol. uniformity and social cntl. Most successful when it leads to 'Selbsgleichschaltung' or 'self-coordination' i.e. people willingly placing themselves under the sway of Nazism. This is exactly what today's Left is doing i.e. like the mafia goons who'd visit a store and say 'nice store ya got here, shame if anything'd happen to it'. 2 cases of street thugs becoming ideological icons; Horst WESSEL (pic) was k. in street battles w/commies, but prop ldr Joseph GOEBBELS portrayed him as a martyr and hero. A new twist is that Antifa (fascist thugs) are weirdly claiming (backed up by MSM) to be anti-fascist!? This helps them seem respectable somehow, and their victims as 'bad guys'!? (maybe GOEBBELS still works at CNN?) How did this happen? It began w/Nazi philosopher Martin HEIDEGGER and continues w/one his his Jewish students Herbert MARCUSE who brot it to America. HM taught the '60s Left to imitate the fascists while posing as anti-fascists!? Finally we turn to another refugee from Nazism who nevertheless worked w/them as a youth and now directs his own private militia (like HITLER/MUSSOLINI did in their early days). His name is George SOROS.
The Left's Favorite Nazi (204)
Ever since MH's magnum opus 'Being and Time' was pub'd (1927) its been widely influential, providing intellectual grounding for a whole range of prog causes. 1st, his root-and-branch attack on Western metaphysics from PLATO to the present inspired the leftist academic movement called deconstructionism. His fundamental questioning of technology is invoked by the so-called deep ecologists of [leftist] environmental movement. His opposition to capitalism and materialism - both of which he links w/'Americanism' - has boosted the spirits of leftist anti-capitalism and anti-Americanism. His attack on individualism and his enthusiasm for communities of blood and soil helped provide a basis for modern Identity politics. Finally his atheism has fortified the secular, non-rel. [anti] basis of modern prog-ism. Should we be surprised he admired HITLER and was a dues-paying Nazi? Also a chf coordinator of Nazi Gleichschaltung. Even when the atrocities came to later post-war he remained silent. Despite his complicity [or because of it i.e. 'one of us'] many progs rushed to defend him. They cite that many of his students were Jewish (Karl LOWITH, Herbert MARCUSE, Hannah ARENDT [MH had affair w/her]) so he couldn't be anti-Semitic. He also obfuscated his ties to Nazism later. But's its clear to those who study him that he viewed Nazism as 'arising out of his philosophy' (205). Also the recent publication of his notebooks show he was a lifelong anti-Semite. He distinguished tribal society (Gemeinschaft) w/commercial society (Gesellschaft) and associated latter w/America and Jews i.e. 'commerce, trade, rootless, grubby pursuit of finance'. He hated how modernism was 'eroding the bonds of tribal society'. Some progs (e.g. Sheldon WOLIN) want to 'kick him out' of the pantheon (even tho they believe exactly what he did) since he might threaten their 'to date highly successful project to create a state-w/in-a-state'.
Brownshirt Tactics 101 (208)
In 1925 Jewish philosopher Theodor LESSING spoke out v. the repressive pol. climate of Wiemar Germany. Though his explicit (ostensible) target was the craveness of the Wiemar regime under Paul von HINDENBURG, his real target was the emerging power of Nazism and he faulted the govt for yielding to it. The Nazis immediately recognized the threat posed by LESSING, and rallied students using [Antifa-type] tactics to drive him out the next year. His later description of this sounds like today's news i.e. he asked 'what could I do?' v. these hecklers. DD then discusses similar actions v. Chas MURRAY and others on univ campuses ... to explain it he turns to Herbert MARCUSE and Theodor ADORNO of the Frankfurt School or Inst for Social Rsrch in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. HM was a student of HEIDEGGER at Frieburg, becoming MH's asst. HM was a young Marxist and saw MH as a revolutionary just like MARX i.e. a central theme of both was 'alienation', both were 'men of the Left' who despised technological capitalism. HM sought to integrate MARX and MH. Both shared hatred of individualism, capitalism and 'Americanism'. Once again confirms the Leftist roots of fascism (and Nazism). But as a Jew HM recognized the personal peril to him of HITLER's anti-Semitism, so he broke w/MH and fled the country, joining the Frankfurt School, formed in 1922 but by now (early 30s) most of its scholars were German Jewish exiles living/working abroad. A colleague was ADORNO, and they both came to USA. ADORNO initially to NYC then to CA for several yrs before returning to Europe 1949. HM worked at Columbia Univ in NYC then during WWII in WA DC for Ofc of War Info -> OSS -> [after he left] CIA. HM later taught at Brandeis Univ, then UCSD where he remained til his d1979.
The Deceitful Origin of 'Anti-Fascism' (211)
These 2 men had a huge influence on both academic and popular cultures and gave prog-ism its 'anti-fascist' credentials. But not at first; the FS began by trying to peddle its various brands of Marxism and socialism in America but found few takers. Here people tend to like nice homes and cars and pools in their backyard! So HM/TA 'put their thinking caps on' and had a joint epiphany; the mkt-ing ploy of 'anti-fascism' (likely noticed mkt-ing can be used to sell all sorts of dreck to 'stupid' Americans, where 'there's a sucker born every minute' acc. to P T BARNUM). Since the US was proud to have just defeated hated fascism/Nazism, they needed to find a way to link those to the enemies of American prog-ism. Most people had little understanding of these terms so could be manipulated easily. These 2 were German Jews so could claim to know these 'from the inside'. It worked! HM was actually hired by the US govt to offer insights into how to combat them ideologicaclly (wolf in hen-house). HM had worked in Germany to 're-educate' students away from Nazism. No one seemed to realize these 2 men had their own leftist agenda; their real enemies (of ALL leftists) were, of course, free mkts and the various inst's of the pvt sector, incl church, trad family [nation, educ, culture] ... their goal was to k. capitalism and remake the social order [i.e. ENGELS' 'destroy 3 things; 1 rel (esp Chr) 2 trad values (esp m.) 3 capitalism (esp pvt prop)]. So they re-pkg'd 'fascism' as a form of capitalism and moral trad-ism i.e. they reinvented it as a phenom of the Right!? [must involve some complicated psych. 'transferrence' of their leftist guilt ...]. The classic document here was A's famous F-scale (F for fascism). He outlined it in his 1950 bk 'The Authoritarian Personality' i.e. that fascism is a form of auth-ism and its worst manifestation is self-imposed repression. It dev's early and we can ID it via youthful attachments to rel. superstition and conventional middle-class values re family, sex and society. W/a straight face, he produced this list of questions to detect fascist sympathies; obedience/respect for auth are the most important virtues kids should learn ... homosexuality is an esp rotten form of delinquency ... no insult to our honor should ever go unpunished ... no matter how they act on surface, men are only interested in women for 1 reason ... !? So they're trying link fascism w/'psych and sexual repression'. DD says a moment's reflection shows this to be BS i.e. since social attitudes to rel, fam, sexuality were quite similar for ALL these countries (of W Civ) w/modest variations. So they couldn't explain why fascism came from Germany/Italy but not others. The 1 effective question would've been 'do you support increasing the pwr of the centralized state over ind, fam, churches and pvt sector?', ADORNO left that one OFF his list! (it would've brot enthused YES's from prog's and Dem's). So why did Americans fall for this obviously fraudulent pseudo-science crap? Short answer; academia already by then had a strong prog tilt, and prog's were looking for a way to cover up its own complicity w/fascism/Nazism. These 2 refugees were selling exactly what they wanted to buy. They're still buying; in 2005 e.g. prog soc-ist Alan WOLFE admitted flaws in Adorno's TAP bk but said its more relevant now than ever since 'it seems to capture the way many Chr-right pols view the world'. They love TAP because it allows them to say 'Down w/Fascism, now let's get rid of cons-ism and expose those evil people on the Right'.
The Sex Pervert as Anti-Fascist (214)
Turning from ADORNO to MARCUSE, the bigger culprit in giving prog-ism its 'anti-fascist' rep via 2 items: 1 a corollary of ADORNO's thought i.e. if fascism is defined by internal psych/sex repression, then anti-fa must mean the opposite i.e. internal psych/sex LIBERATION! That's the msg of his 1st important bk 'Eros and Civ' i.e. he made the case for sexual freedom by inverting FREUD's famous argument in 'Civ and its Discontents'. FREUD had argued that Civ is built by repressing our erotic impulses, else social chaos. We defer gratification and channel those energies into productive enterprises. HM argued the opposite; modern society 'sacrifices' our libidos, turning them into commodities, but he also blamed rel and social mores for repressing and enslaving them, accused America of 'channeling them into monogamous reproduction' and having 'a taboo on perversions'! DD says this should be both familiar and funny to us; HM said this repression is 'emerging American fascism'. His solution was to 'liberate the libido' [and wreck the culture, voila the 1960s]. HM became a kind of guru in the 60s, unsurprisingly. He gave them a 'lofty basis' for their 'genital adventures'! (libs LOVE to feel good about themselves as they're ruining everything). Now ADORNO/MARCUSE knew (tho most Americans didn't and still don't) that most Nazi/fascist ldrs were THEMSELVES bohemians; HITLER a painter and artiste (and vegan). Obsessed w/music, regular at Beyreuth Festival. Said WAGNER's music reflected the triumph of art over life. HITLER depised Christianity as a kind of disease and regularly spoke of eradicating it in 3rd Reich; thot it was for losers. HIMMLER also a natural foods guy, eager proponent of organic farming. Many ldrs condemned congested city living in favor of 'living in harmony w/nature'. Stanley PAYNE called Nazism 'the 1st major expression of environmentalism' (via state cntl, as all progs love). GOEBBELS also aspired to be an 'artist and writer'. MUSSOLINI also a bohemian, considered himself an accomplished violinist. None were 'bourgeois religious and moral trad-ists' (217). Tho Nazis rounded up homos, it was only because they threatened multiplication of Nordic or Aryan population, in fact many Nazi ldrs were themselves actively gay.
Repressive Intolerance (218)
(I guess this is #2) HM also wrote 'One Dimensional Man' to blast capitalism for reducing all values to mkt ones. His solution was to counter corporate ads w/pol propaganda, aimed at 'raising consciousness' (sound familiar? 'community org-ing'). He also showed how American progs could encourage leftist Revs in countries like Vietnam, Cuba and around the world. Then there's the idea he's best remembered for; in his 1970 essay for the bk 'A Critique of Pure Tolerance'. Bottom line is 'no free speech for non-progs'. DD wonders how HM could use Nazi tactics after witnessing their awefulness up close. HM in his writings shows 'Machiavellian admiration for the cunning use of force, and Nietzschean exaltation of pwr'. DD thinks that, whatever his revulsion to anti-Semitism, he observed that Nazi terror tactics WORKED! The most important thing to power-worshipping progs is POWER, and here's a way to GET IT. He's saying throw out your scruples, these tactics work so USE them. Ends justify means. Another subtle idea of his is that the Left can morally justify (assuming they HAVE morals) ANY tactics, since 'they're on the side of humanity and liberation' or as OBAMA loved to say 'on the right side of history'. That's why Slick Willy's predatory behavior was/is routinely excused on the Left. Also Dem donor Jeffrey EPSTEIN's orgy island (which Bill C used) ... Anthony WEINER ... ad infinitim ... So TRUMP and cons aren't fascists as progs say, but MARCUSE/ADORNO et al (Frankfurt School) were intellectual and pol. frauds, con artists of the Left who orig'd their own Big Lie and supplied a bogus rationale for how to engage in fascist thuggery while posing [and feeling good about themselves] as anti-fa.
Geo SOROS' Venture Thuggery (222)
Now we turn to the '3rd miscreant in the trilogy', Geo SOROS! Like HEIDEGGER and MARCUSE, he too is a part of a prog 'Gleichschaltung' and all 3 seems to go about it in same way. Hungarian-born GS became a billionaire by shorting the British pound back in 1990s. His Quantum Fund was one of world's 1st pvt hedge funds. While the other 2 are leading prog intellectuals, GS is clearly its largest financial backer. He's main source of ~200 leftist grps incl Planned Parenthood, MoveOn.org and many leftie environmentalist and 'human rights' grps. All oppose TRUMP (and all GOPers). Also 'Anti-fa' and Blk Lives Matter. He admits he sees himself as 'some kind of god' and has 'carried some rather potent messianic fantasies w/him from childhood'. Asked to elaborate by Britain's 'Independent' he said 'its a sort of disease ... you see yourself as the creator of everything ... but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out'. We'd have to go back to HITLER's remarks after early victories to hear such talk, which even most garden-variety despots generally abstain from. Some fave tactics of his groups are sending 'activitists' to disrupt and humiliate GOP pols in public i.e. to create 'an artificial impression' [propaganda] which is then hyped by media [like GOEBBELS said, a lie repeated often enough becomes 'true' in the peoples' minds]. Another is 'the fake racial incident'. These are mostly 'false flag' operations where leftists write racist slogans on bathroom walls ... then blame conservatives. GS doesn't only fund activisim, but 'disruptive violence'. He's created a militia of paid rent-a-thugs very similar to the Italian blackshirts and Nazi brownshirts, involving street-fighting and intimidating the opposition. His strategy is to disperse millions to dozens or hundreds of these grps, then see which ones are effective, a kind of 'venture thuggery'. DD says the paid protester is something new in American politics. In the 1960s we had protesters, even violent ones, but they weren't mercenaries. GS actually advertises for disrupters and looters. DD saw an ad on Craigslist promising $15/hr to 'cause trouble' ('no mention of whether health benefits are provided' :-) ). David BROCK is the quintessential SOROS henchman, runs several grps incl Media Matters. DD knew him in the old days 'when he called himself a conservative', but says even then he was known as sleazy and dishonest. He boasted about his unscrupulousness, his willingness to lie for a cause. When exposed, he fessed up, but far from cleaning up his act, he switched to the Left, likely realizing they (unlike GOP) wouldn't mind as long as he got 'results'. He claimed he'd been forced out due to his gayness, but DD says that's not true; it was well-known among GOPers. As w/young Nazis, 'viciousness and opportunism seem to go together'. Tho SOROS claims to be a fan of Karl POPPER, champion of classical liberal ideas and 'Open Society' issues, DD is skeptical and wonders if this is just a 'cover' or 'front' allowing SOROS to fund fascist causes while pretending to be anti-fa (a la HM).
Hitler's Collection Boy (225)
SOROS loves to play the Nazi card, as when after 9/11 he slammed Bush's AG John ASHCROFT for questioning the patriotism of its critics - a tactic SOROS likened to the Nazis. He explains in interviews he escaped from the Nazis by 'posing as a Christian' as a 14yo. He saw many other Jews be shipped off to death camps, but had a [Nazi govt guy] 'protector' who swore George was his adopted godson. He even helped confiscate Jewish property! When asked if that was psychologically traumatic [as it would be for any normal Jewish boy] he said 'no, not at all, no guilt, just relief that I avoided it' ... prided himself on 'thinking ahead, anticipating and outsmarting' ... he saw himself as a mere spectator (tho he helped Nazis) ... reminds DD of Josef MENGELE's response when son Rolf confronted him w/his crimes; said he wasn't responsible since all his victims had already been 'marked for death' ... only difference is MENGELE didn't get away w/it, but SOROS has since lefties overlook it. HS once called 1944 'the happiest year of my life'. His dad made money by selling false papers to Jews, allowing them to escape (that's how George got out). Papers, OK, but for profit!? DD says we see in SOROS the kind of base amoralism that links him w/HEIDEGGER and MARCUSE, all deeply involved w/Nazism, maybe all 'damaged' in the same way by it. Thus the leftist movement they've all helped to shape is also 'damaged', and we're all victims of 'this demon-possession'. In a sense, fascism drove them crazy, and now they're trying to make US crazy! SOROS funds thuggist leftist causes, HEIDEGGER openly backed the Nazis, MARCUSE and SOROS promote Nazi tactics on behalf of a purportedly anti-fa Left. Together this horrid trio played a big role in the destruction of our universities, the shameless leftist propaganda of the media, and the brownshirt tactics of progs today.
This isn't the end. Its not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
- Winston CHURCHILL 11-10-1942
9 Denazification (229)
In 1945 as US, Brit and Soviet armies converged on Berlin 9mos after the D-Day Normandy landing, HITLER and Eva BRAUN saw impending defeat and on 4/30 took their own lives. 3 days later MUSSOLINI disguised himself, got into an Alfa Romeo sports car and tried to flee Italy w/his mistress Claretta PETACCI. It didn't work since his features were too distinctive; they were caught at the Swiss border, both machine-gunned next day by local partisans, and their bodies hung upside down in the Piazzale Loreto in Milan. So w/in a few days both H and M perished, thus bringing fascism and Nazism to an ignominious end [for awhile]. Its back now, and he warns us that if we let them overturn the 2016 [or 2020] election there'll be no point in holding any more elections, since the Left will have est'd veto pwr over the results. Let this sink in. If we realized America is facing a fascist threat, we can't do things in the same way as before i.e. normal, business-as-usual politics is obsolete. We must devise an adequate response to this danger, and DD presents his ideas for doing so in this final chapter. The old fascism was defeated by military force from outside, but we can vanquish it from the inside w/o mil. force. Historians agree that both Italy and German could've prevented it by keeping HITLER and MUSSOLINI away from power e.g. Italian mil/police were much stronger than M and could've thwarted his March on Rome. Same for HITLER, who was weak in early days and could've easily been thwarted by authorities. Why didn't they? Historian Renzo De FELICE says they were complacent, in effect 'constitutionalized' fascism and failed to take it seriously. Same for Germany i.e. complacency and pusilanimity [fighting spirit]. All accommodated HITLER, not realizing [or not wanting to ack] he wasn't playing by the same [democratic] rules they were. In doing so, the very people who could've stopped him, didn't. Then came the deluge in which most of these enablers were swept away. This appeasement of HITLER continued on the foreign policy front e.g. Neville CHAMBERLAIN's infamous 'deal' i.e. 'Peace in our Time'. HITLER had sized up NC as 'weak' i.e. 'England no longer the swashbuckling land of Sir Francis DRAKE'. Had UK/France fought HITLER early, they could've easily defeated him. By coddling him, they gave him time to grow stronger, so accommodation of fascism [or any evil] carries a very high price, possibly including survival.
Thru Both Sides of Their Mouth (231)
Today's GOP leaders are similarly taking a big risk if they seek to appease the fascism of the political Left. Today's version is different from the 1930s e.g. it cloaks its true nature behind words like 'liberal, tolerant, inclusive, open-minded, compassionate ...' (1930s fascists and socialists called themselves by those names). Tho today's lefties call themselves anti-fascist, we should understand that the people who champion the centralized state have a long history of racism and racial terrorism, using the power of govt against their political opponents and using cultural intimidation and even street thuggery to enforce their ideology, regardless of any 'anti-fa' pose. We must also realize that their attempts to foist these soiled terms 'Nazi' and 'fascist' onto the Right are exercises in Freudian 'transferrence' [or 'projection', and propaganda]. Crazier still, they're trying to smear the very champions of limited govt and individual rights who seek to DEFEND citizens from over-reaching govt. In this respect the Left is like the vicious sib who punches you in the face, then starts wailing that you've punched him! So we're in a bizarro-world situation here. So lefties are forced to lie 'thru both sides of their mouths' i.e. re who the real fascists and Nazis were, and then about who THEY [today's progs] are. Any strategy to defeat the fascist Left must begin by unmasking, as DD has done in this book, the full dimensions of the Big Lie. Trump realizes something wierd is up and that he has to take a new and different approach. The fight isn't just political and legal but cultural. Unlike most GOPers he refuses to 'walk w/in the parameters the Left has assigned him'. Rather than be intimidated by them, he dishes it right back. DD fears that most of the Right refuses to take seriously the fascist threat from the Left (or even understand and recognize it). Its almost like their strategy is to 'meet the left half-way' on everything [want to end liberty? how about phasing it out over 10yrs]. But of course they detect this weakness and just keep pushing, like the revolutionaries they are. We shouldn't make the same mistake the Germans and Italians did, but should uproot fascism ASAP i.e. carry out our own denazification just as the Allies did in postwar Italy and Germany. We can rout it from the inside and finally put it on 'the ash-heap of history'.
An Anti-Fascist Agenda (235)
Here's his plan:
1 ID main ideological doctrine of lefist fascism, the recommend policy measures to undo it by moving in opposite direction
2 end 'Gleichschaltung' by breaking inst monopoly, end regimentation of thot, explode Big Lie
3 fight 'fire w/fire' on Left's fascist thuggery i.e. 'no free ride for fascists'
At its core, fascism is the construction of the all-powerful Leviathan state i.e. the State is absolute and all other pwr centers (ind, grp, church, family, business, schools ...) are relative. We are like mere cells in the State's body; each meaningless, valuable only to the degree we serve 'the body' [a perverted pseudo-Christian idea]. So real anti-fascism must dismantle the Leviathan state i.e. restore US govt to its proper lmt'd Const. parameters. Under progs it has gotten far too large and pwrfl and has become tyrannical. 1st get rid of the Obama legacy; overturn Obamacare, replace w/system restoring pvt cntl and encouraging pvt initiative. 2nd repeal DODD-FRANK, returning banking and investment industries to private control. 3rd tighten elibibility to food stamps and other welfare (OBAMA deliberately swelled the roles, always good for progs when more Americans are dependent on govt). Then pass comprehensive tax reform w/lower and simpler taxes. Also steeply reduce regulations. An essential feature of Nazism and fascism are reduction in any regional or local pwr, centralizing ALL to Berlin, Rome (or WA DC). The Left has worked for decades doing this in America, making states merely 'administrative bodies' of WA DC (exactly as HITLER did i.e. 'doing what BISMARCK, Kaiser Wilhelm and Weimar Republic never dared to attempt' p237). Dems claim to want to centralize to avoid 'racism' of states, but THEY were the racists calling for 'States' Rights' to protect slavery in 19C! ('thou dost protest too much').
Built to Last (238)
But how to make these changes 'stick' and endure? Getting good SC (and lower) judges is key. He says GOPers play by Constitutional rules while Dems do 'whatever it takes' to stack the deck in their favor. Only solution is appoint ideologically committed GOPers to take on the same type of Dems i.e. to SEE it as a political fight, which it IS and always has been since the emergence of prog-ism in late 19C. Since 1980 America has had divided govt. But interestingly, 1-party dominance has been the rule v. exception in US history. From 1820s-60 Dems were on top, then 1865-1932 GOP, then 1932-80 Dems again. We need to do like FDR did and create a semi-permanent shift in the structure of govt in OUR direction. This means we must build a GOP governing coalition. Key is expand support among working class [as TRUMP has done]. 2nd go all-out to win minorities from Dems.
The End of Gleichschaltung (241)
This is the ugliest face of prog fascism, its effort to establish uniformity of thought/feeling across the country. As GOEBBELS said, its not just about politics, but a total and all-encompassing general perspective (Worldview) on all public matters. The goal is to get to a point where you don't even have to talk about it anymore since everyone agrees and its just settled (like the Judeo-Christian perspective once was in the West). The Left pursues this not just by 'fire in the streets' but also 'the long march through the institutions'. Having taken over 'academia, media and Hollywood' they leverage these to expand it further into the culture. We conservatives need to break up this monopoly, open up a rival space and create rival cultural institutions. Also have to stop the street thugs, using lawful physical force. 1st step is to create a new mindset (WV). Must learn to 'decode' what we see/hear. Step 2, use ALL weapons at our disposal e.g. cut off federal funding for NPR, PBS ... organs of fascist Left. Also make university funding dependent on upholding free speech, true diversity of views (not just of skin colors) ... notice we're not trying to persuade leftists, but cutting them off ... 3rd is create over time rival institutions in media, culture, education ... also our own clowns that mock the progs (just as theirs mock us) ... also take on SOROS (and other billionaires') brigades ... unmask Antifa thugs, tear down THEIR signs, duct-tape THEM to lampposts ... fire w/fire ... unleash the law on these new brownshirts ... Dem KKK didn't just go away, it was fought by GOP Pres U S GRANT during Reconstruction, then later via FBI ... he says 200 lefties who disrupted Trump's inauguration were charged w/felony rioting, a crime that carries a max 10yr sentence ... once judges start enforcing this 'all this nonsense will quickly subside'.
Quid Pro Quo (245)
Finally DD asks how we stop the Left's use of govt power against us. OBAMA weaponized the govt to attack his enemies [us]. DD cites his own run-in w/them. This is pure fascist behavior, right out of GENTILE's writings i.e. 'no longer a revolution against the State, but a revolutionary State mobilzed v. residue and internal debris that obstructed its evolution and organization' (wow). HITLER called for a [salutary] form of 'physical and spiritual terror', realizing his targets were 'neither morally nor mentally equal to such attacks'. So they're taken by surprise 'til the nerves of the attacked person break down'. Ultimate goal is political conformity. Since DD experienced this 1rst-hand he understands it. He's tempted to recommend WE use similar tactics. There's even a precedent i.e. LINCOLN's Order of Retaliation calling for a rebel soldier to be executed (or sent to hard labor) for every black soldier captured or enslaved by South. LINCOLN knew this was the only way to change Confederate behavior. And it did. But that was wartime and, upon reflection, we're in a different situation. We're not in a civil war (yet). And we don't want ourselves to become the instruments of lawlessness. Fortunately there's a better solution, to just 'throw the bums out' like we did in 2016. Good start. Next step is investigate and prosecute all OBAMA-era abuses of power. In sum, we don't need to fight leftist lawlessness w/our own version. We can fight it w/lawFULness, but we have to be firm and resolute. Are we up to it? He says yes, look at our history, we (GOP) fought the Civil War, shut down the KKK, opposed eugenics and forced sterilization, resisted incipient fascism of 1960s street thugs, in sum we're the party that has, for 150yrs, combated the fascism of the political Left. We've won before and can again. We have the power now to stop them. We just have to DO it. In the words of that 1960s slogan, 'if not now, when? if not us, who? [or Esther's 'perhaps we've been put here for 'such a time as this'].
Also Econ 1-19-19 ltr from a lib recalled how Dems and their 'imperial presidency' [of FDR] 'conquered' the Depression, the Nazis and Jim Crow ... but then I reflected on how THEY actually created all 3!? ...
Scott McCONNELL (tAC Sep/Oct 2018) makes an interesting related point in an article on immig; in rvw-ing Reihan SALAM's bk 'Melting Pot or Civil War?' he 'makes the subtle point that part of the current appeal of America's major cities to upper middle-class professionals is the presence of a politically docile service class of low-skilled immigrants, many of them undocumented' (but he says there was much more need of unskilled labor in 1900 than now, and no substantive education gap existed then [all were un-] ... kids of low-income immigration are now 30% of all low-inc kids (24% of whole) ... avg immig has 9yrs school, 2nd gen 12% ... while 1st gen is mostly pol. docile, 2nd gen unlikely to be (esp. w/o improved outcomes).
In 'The Greatest Movie Ever Made' (NR 9-12-2016), Armond WHITE says D W GRIFFITH's 1916 movie Intolerance (100yrs after its release) offers an inspiring vision of love and history. Its subject is still close to us, tho its art, political specifics, moral arguments and movie styles may seem distant. DWG's still-daring ingenuity calls for a reception more open-minding, optimistic and universal than we're accustomed to today. At its 9/5 opening, its silent-movie opening text pages said 'our play is made up of 4 separate stories, laid in different periods of history, each wtih its own set of characters'. Using a prolog and 2 acts, DWG called it a 'sun-play' [to illuminate a darkened world], marked by florid melodramatics developed from Emersonian Transcendentalism, which film scholar Bill R SCALIA has described as 'calling for ... the ability to 'see' past the material, apparent world to the world of eternal forms, which shaped nature in accordance w/a divine moral imperative [i.e. the spiritual world described in the Bible]'. In place of the saccharine [typical emotivism used then and now], DWG interweaves 4 tales of rel. and pol. presecution: the invasion of Belshazzar's Babylon by Cyrus's Persia; Christ's crucifixion; the RCC massacre of Huguenot Protestants in 16C France; and a young, early 20C couple wronged by urban 'reformers'. This film and his earlier 1915 The Birth of a Nation relied on a more unified mass audience, before modern niche marketing and fragmentation occurred. The earlier film was based on the primal issues of slavery, US Civil War lore, and the rise of the KKK (all of which AW described at NRO 2-18-15). TBoaN wasn't just America's 1st film epic, it was its 1st political film, and the considerable outcry it raised compelled DWG to make a follow-up - a grand statement that would clarify his position on both bigotry and censorship. The 3hr later movie allowed him to 'get ahead of the controversy' by 'sublimating his pol. apologia into the emotional and moral defense of love (which later in the film is aligned w/'universal justice'). The 4 stories present cultural, social, moral, and political arguments for achieving and preserving humane values - the debate over which is still especially pertinent 100yrs later. Rather than 'walking back' the positions on race and class that many saw as racism and classism (elitism) after viewing the earlier, complicated movie, in the 2nd one he 'doubled down', offering a large-scale, sentimental expression of his politics. He projected his combined sense of history, social conditions, literature and religion open-heartedly, achieving the guilelessness that TBoaN had seemed to lack. Attempting to create mankind's ultimate Big Picture as a spiritual speculation, DWG concocted an existentialist POV long before that philosophical concept had gained currency. Its visualized by Lillian GISH's mother rocking a cradle while behind her sit 3 white-robed women i.e. the 3 Fates. DWG pioneered many story-telling 'tricks of the trade' and paired classical themes to modern issues. But in addition to its technical excellence, its social experiment - purposely consolidating moral precepts, social experience and language - was also a success. Its hard to imagine a modern director chastising intolerance as a timeless, global theme of man's inhumanity to man, encompassing almost all of world history (v. the usual topical, PC diatribes e.g. anti-gun, anti-death penalty, anti-Chr, pro-gay ...). Pre-WWI America was less fractious, uncorrupted by today's PC tropes. DWG could allude to SHAKESPEARE, DICKENS, EMERSON, WHITMAN and the Bible, since these were all part of the 'collective ideology' of the time. He even used footnotes, rare even then, citing literary and painting sources for his visual re-creations (also in his 1921 'Orphans of the Storm', set during French Rev). He benefited from 'a common cultural fount'. Each of the 4 stories shows how hatred and intolerance battle against love and charity (thru the ages). His sophisticated use of love as a theme - perceiving both romantic and political ideas in jeopardized situations - that prevents the film from being mawkish or hackneyed. Busybody Reformists saying 'we must have laws to make people good' open the epic, evoking that incessant cry for legislation as a response to new crises, still evident today (as libs create 'crises' to justify yet more pwr/$ sent to govt). DWG profoundly saw how single- and narrow-minded partisanship affects lives. DWG ends Intolerance with prophecy: 'Perfect love shall bring peace forevermore' as angels descend to earth as soldiers, but then lay down their arms as kids play in the meadows. Plenty of Christian imagery attest to that shared value of the time. Early SPIELBERG was seen as a modern (ecumenical) DWG, but his later films have gotten more overtly political (and PC). There's eye-dazzling imagery of the legendary Babylon-court tableau. The film personalizes political history, conflating it with love. DWG used cinema to examine both history and love deeply, proposing that, in his view, they're undeniably inextricable. That is still the boldest of all political propositions. Try to find a modern politician or movie-maker who'd dare.
Wow, we watched Dinesh D'SOUZA's latest movie 'Death of a Nation' at the theater on Sa 8-11-18. It was powerful! He said Dems like to say they stand for no racism, sexism or other -isms, but the truth is basically the opposite. They also like to argue that in the 1930s the good guys/bad guys switched sides (nope). In particular he demonized Dem presidents JACKSON (Party fndr) and WILSON. In the 1820s the old Dem-Rep party of JEFFERSON et al split along racist lines (the old Federalist Party was by then defunct). The GOP eventually grew out of Northern resistance to slavery under LINCOLN and the Dems continued with unapologetic pro-slavery and white supremacism. He portrays JACKSON as a cruel slaveholder, including harsh whippings (often whipping to death escapees when caught), black mistresses (involuntary) ... like a warlord ... (get more details) ... then WILSON reinvigorated the KKK by holding a public showing of 'Birth of a Nation' in the WH. He also segregated Princeton (where he'd been president) 'for the benefit of blacks'. He worked to form 'plantations' of not only blacks but poor whites in big cities e.g. Boss Tweed's NYC 'machine' and other big cities too i.e. 'machine' politics basically a new type of plantation with 'massas', especially poor immigrants. WH aka 'the Big House' (i.e. slaveholder's quarters) with America the new 'plantation' (replacing the outlawed but lucrative older ones). This is how Dems envisioned profiting from low-enders. DD's point is that the Dems have ALWAYS been racist and it persists today e.g. how they appeal to out-groups but have NO intention of liberating them, rather keeping them down and charging 'protection' money w/o end. DD said not 1 GOPer owned slaves v. most Dem ldrs did before abolition. Civil rights legislation passed w/o 1 Dem vote (DD points to an earlier 'civil rights' bill from yr 18xx?). The 1960s one was more about getting them back 'on the plantation' ... Also LINCOLN's main beef was NOT race-related, it was theft-related i.e. 'you work, I eat', he saw that as quintessentially un-American, but modern Dems are STILL trying to steal our money, self-sufficiency, pride, well-being, aspirations, kids, beliefs, freedom ... and our country!